McLaren racing director Eric Boullier says the new MP4-31 is matching the team's expectations on the first day of pre-season testing and believes that Honda are now making progress with the power unit.
McLaren completed 35 laps on the first morning of testing, which is a big improvement compared to the same test last year when Honda engine struggled for reliability. Boullier would not comment in any depth on Honda's progress, but said McLaren's chassis was delivering as expected.
"All the numbers we had before on the car are correlating with what we expected," he said. "You base your winter work on expectations and simulations it's a good sign and it means are tools are working correctly. That means we know the car is better than last year, so we will see.
"35 laps in the morning is not the best of the best but at least we have covered a decent part of the plan ... I'm not going to say anything about the engine except it was running this morning, which was good. The only feedback I can give you is the first data we have gathered this morning on the car itself are looking - as they call it - 'as per map'. So it means in the engineering vocabulary that the car is correlating, which is good."
It was put to Boullier that McLaren only exists to win, but again he was careful not to raise expectations too high.
"Yes, but we need all the tools to do it properly. As far as I'm concerned, I'm in charge of the chassis part, drivers and stuff like this. On this part we are trying to be on target, but from the engine part you have to ask Honda. We will win when we have the best driver, the best chassis, the best team, the best car and the best engine."
When asked directly, Boullier refused to comment on whether McLaren would be challenging for wins this year, but when asked how much better the car was compared to last year's, he said: "Better. It's better. I'm not going to tell you how much because then you start to build the wrong expectations outside our world. Even us, we don't know what the others have been doing over the winter and we don't know yet reliably.
When pushed on the performance of the engine, Boullier added: "I think there is some good improvements from the engine side, so clearly they are on the right path and clearly fixed a few issues that were hurting us last year, so this is good."