The McLaren boss Eric boullier admitted that he was shocked by the inability of the team to fight for top-10 starting berth at the GP of Bahrain and demanded investigation of their activities.
McLaren brought a major upgrade for your car this weekend that sparked optimism that they can challenge the leaders this weekend, after Fernando Alonso finished fifth in the season-opening Australian GP.
But Alonso could only get 13th in Bahrain, a place ahead of teammate Stoffel Vandorn. Perhaps more worrisome fastest lap Alonso was over two seconds shy of the time of the pole position Sebastian Vettel.
“No need for big investigations,” said boullier sky Sports F1. “We need to figure out what’s going on.
“We need to figure out why and I’ll ask the questions to the plant. I’m amazed as all of us on the pit wall. We need to understand what happened.”
Bulge later was absent at the highest level of McLaren in the media, as he took part in the advanced engineering report.
Vettel on pole position, Hamilton starts ninth
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Alonso, who was 11th in qualifying in Australia, said: “It was an unpleasant surprise. We did not expect to be so far.
“It was a poor performance from us. We are definitely not happy.”
The Spaniard added: “probably a little worse than expected. We thought to be challenging for Q3. But we realized that in Q1 we were not competitive.
“The nature of the scheme is far from ideal for our machines. We came here looking at the results of last year, and it wasn’t great, it was one of the worst performances. Unfortunately, we saw that it is a chain we have in our hands, but from the point of view of the approach and settings. This is something that we must constantly analyze, but the new part on the car is fine.”
So why not McLaren struggling?
Alonso said in Australia that he expects the team to improve in every race until the end of 2018. The team plays catch-up after a late switch from Honda to Renault power and struggled for reliability at the winter tests.
Bulge gave the team was too ambitious in their design for their vehicles by 2018 MCL33 by pushing too hard and too fast in trying to join Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull in front.
“We’re a little behind,” boullier admitted to sky sports. “We have a development curve which is very large and we have lots to come in the next races.
“But I think we were too ambitious. We are unable to deliver all the parts and upgrades we wanted in the first race, so we’re now two races behind.
“We wanted to develop to keep vehicles with the development of a new PU. We arrived unprepared in Barcelona [for the winter tests] and had problems with reliability.”
But Alonso expressed confidence that at present, modernization is developed on the basis of in Woking team, ultimately, greatly affect the productivity MCL33.
“We know our weaknesses, we know where we need to improve the car,” he said. “The machines we’ve got on the track and the machine we are developing on the plant is different.
“This car fixes all of our weaknesses, we need to get this car as soon as possible, as some teams have brought here, and they made a huge step forward. We miss that step forward at the moment.
They can recover on Sunday Gran – at?
A glimmer of hope for McLaren is that their race pace in Australia was far superior to their single-circular form, and Alonso remains hopeful that the team can fight for points in Bahrain.
“We will look after the rear tyres quite well and I hope that can be an advantage in the race,” the double world champion said.
“In one round of results is not yet optimized. We can’t extract the maximum out of the tyres on the first lap. In the long term is always better than one round, and we need to understand why.”
As Alonso and Stoffel Vandorn finished in the points in Melbourne despite the lack of a top-10 on Saturday and the Spaniard added: “we are not able to start the race, which is perfect, but we were not in the 3rd quarter in Australia, and both cars were wearing them Sunday, so we can repeat it.”
How to follow the Bahrain GP on sky F1
| Sunday 8 APR | Sky blog digital F1 live | 2.30 PM: pit lane video | 3: 30 PM: the grid live! | 4.10 PM: GP Bahrain live! |
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Sebastian Vettel to win from pole in the Bahrain GP? Watch live broadcast on sky sports F1 from 2: 30 PM on Sunday, it’s off 4.10 PM. To Make Sky Sports F1.
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