McLaren’s second day of running at Formula 1’s Barcelona pre-season test was cut short by a fuel system issue.
With teams allowed just three days on track within the five-day test, taking place behind closed doors from Monday to Friday, the MCL40 first emerged from the garage on Wednesday with Lando Norris at the wheel.
The Briton completed 62 laps – according to SoyMotor’s timing data – as he spent most of the afternoon in the garage. On Thursday, his team-mate Oscar Piastri took over but covered just 48 laps, as a fuel system issue ruled him out of the action for the remainder of the day.
“It’s a shame we could not run in the afternoon as every minute of track time is precious at such an early stage of the season,” performance technical director Mark Temple said. “We discovered a fuel system problem, which meant we haven’t been able to do all the running we would like.
“The car is very complex, so we decided to bring the car back into the garage and strip it down to fully understand where the problem is coming from, ahead of tomorrow’s running.”
Other than those mechanical gremlins, Temple said McLaren ‘didn’t encounter anything too unexpected’.
“The behaviour and handling of the car is in line with what we thought, so nothing is catching the drivers out,” he added. “It’s just about learning and getting to know it, and then as we get more time, we’ll look to try and tweak or tune the car.”
Oscar Piastri, McLaren
Photo by: McLaren
Speaking to F1, Piastri said the priority was “just trying to iron out all these bugs, find the problems”, but he unfortunately wasn’t pressed on the fuel system issue or any other loosely mentioned gremlins by the interviewer.
“I think we’ve already identified a few things we can try and improve on the car to make it feel a bit nicer, you know they’re all going to be different to what we’ve had, so just trying to find all the bugs, all the problems and then try and make the car faster,” the Australian subsequently commented.
Piastri’s fastest lap on Thursday was, again according to unofficial timing, a 1m18.419s, which would be nearly two seconds slower than George Russell’s benchmark, a 1m16.445s.
McLaren’s end-of-day press release features an interesting statement: “From these very early hours of track time, it looks like some competitors have set a very high bar for performance.”
This will no doubt point to Mercedes’ relentless running with a potentially ominous pace – though it obviously is too early to draw any conclusions.
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