Boullier: ‘McLaren behind Mercedes, Ferrari’

Eric Boullier has confirmed that McLaren are still trailing Mercedes and Ferrari ahead of the 2016 season.

Hopes were high for the British team to bounce back from their disastrous 2015 season and join the battle at the front again.

However, Boullier claims that, although they will get more out of their Honda engine this season, they are still lagging behind.

"They have definitely fixed the main issue we had last year, which was deployment,” he said of the Honda technical team.

"However, we are still not at the performance level of Mercedes and Ferrari, so there is still a lot of work to do.

"But after the problems of last year, the week was more about making sure we could run, with so much to check on the car, to get out of the car and to send back to the factory.

"From the end of last season in November through to the start of the test all we have been able to work on is simulation.

"That means you tend to deviate all the time from the truth, so now the truth is coming back into the system.

"That allows us to ensure the correlation is OK, and we know where we are and where we are going.

"[The second test] will be interesting because everyone will have to do race simulation and qualifying runs at some stage, so then we will start to pick things up."

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