McLaren is predicting big improvements during the 2016 season both from its chassis and engine supplier Honda.
After a lacklustre season in 2015, pressure is mounting on the McLaren-Honda partnership to make a big step up the grid in its second year together. In terms of pure mileage the car has already made progress compared to 2015, with 3,305km completed in this year's two pre-season tests compared to 1,751km over three pre-season tests last year.
The true performance of the MP4-31 remains unclear, but Honda says it is happy with its Melbourne-specification power unit ahead of further improvements during the season.
"We have already homologated our engine so that this specification will go Melbourne," Honda F1 boss Yusuke Hasegawa said. "We have already used exactly the same engine here and we have run it at 100%. Actually, the point is that we will improve our engine throughout the season, but as a starting point it is very good.
"I cannot tell you the exact plan, but everyone, including the team, expects us to improve our engine performance. We are trying within the rules to do that."
On the chassis side, McLaren did not have time to test all its 2016 parts in Barcelona and will be bringing a significant package of upgrades to the first race in Australia.
"In our case it's a little bit different. We are not running the full 2016-spec here [at testing]," racing director Eric Boullier said. "We are a bit behind the programme so that means we are going to turn up to Australia with more bits on the car which unfortunately have not been signed off here but I think we have been able to run at least most of the days which is very good news.
"In terms of the chassis it is important that we could go through all the systems which we couldn't do last year, so for us it is a good achievement. I think now we have a reliable car more or less to start the season. So we are definitely more confident and I think there will be more to come now. The base sure looks OK and there will be much more performance coming in the coming weeks."
Asked about the difference between 2016 and 2015, Boullier added: "It's day and night. Last year we couldn't do anything on the car, so just checking ... nothing actually! At least this year we went through a lot of job lists and to-do lists and check lists. In terms of systems and even the car itself we pushed some limits on some new designs we had on the car. Some of them failed, some of them didn't, which is a normal process of testing and I'm happy with the result.
"So at least now we have covered decent mileage over the last eight days so we are much more prepared and comfortable. Also feeding back to the machines in Woking, they have more data so we know where we are and it's going to be a big boost for us in development.
"We wanted to give the maximum time to the aerodynamicists to develop the package and then you have to compress the lead time on the production, something will happen and then you are behind. That's it. Nothing wrong, no drama, no stories, nothing. It just happens, it happens every day and every race, to be honest."