McLaren racing director Eric Boullier is not expecting any on-track "miracles" from his team at the opening test at the Circuit de Catalunya next week.
After a torrid 2015 season McLaren did not set any targets for 2016 when it launched its new car on Sunday. The car features a revised Honda power unit aimed at overcoming the reliability issues and power deficit the team experienced in 2015, but with just eight days of testing ahead of the first race, Boullier said the team must work methodically to maximise its track time.
"The two Barcelona tests will merely herald the continuation of the huge collaborative task that all departments have been engaged in during the off-season," Boullier said. "We'll be aiming to spend the four days of the first test carefully and methodically: extracting the maximum from the time available, and concentrating our efforts on proving out our central systems, operational procedures and electronics checks.
"We'll need to verify our work in the garage before we can expect any miracles on track - essentially, to ensure we walk before we can run. After all, testing is just that: testing. But be assured, we're motivated and determined, and we're pulling together."
Boullier praised the team's efforts in getting the car ready over the winter.
"We must recognise the very hard work performed over the past few months by everyone in Woking, Sakura and Milton Keynes. The guys have shown intense dedication throughout the winter period, and the result is that they've successfully kept our aggressive build and development programmes on schedule. As such, all our team members are a credit to McLaren-Honda, and consequently we're incredibly grateful to everyone involved in the development of the MP4-31.
"But we're never satisfied, which is why we've continued to strengthen our engineering team in recent weeks and months, and we're confident that the changes we've made will improve and accelerate our car-development progress in the future."