McLaren Racing Director Eric Boullier has praised the resolve shown by the Woking-based team during what has been a difficult and often testing 2017 season, dominated by the problems with Honda.
Instead of fighting for podiums and regular points as they arguably should, McLaren has found themselves floundering in the midfield and for the first half of the year often struggled simply to finish a race let alone do so competitively.
While the frustrations have built, the work has gone on to overcome the problems and in the second half of the year, the situation has been a little brighter if still not exactly sunny with four points finishes in the last six races.
“I’m proud of the battles we’ve fought and the achievements we’ve made as a team this year, despite the lack of results and their respective influence on the championship table,” Boullier said reflecting on the year.
“Every member of our team has worked tirelessly to improve our package, race by race, and this weekend will be no exception, as we strive to make the most of every session before the close of the season for the winter shutdown.”
The progress in the final races has been due to a mix of improvements from Honda but also on the chassis and with no major aerodynamic changes for 2018, except the controversial Halo, the Frenchman expects that to translate into a stronger MCL33.
“We use every single opportunity on track to evaluate and improve our package and learn valuable lessons for next year, and this weekend will be just as important as ever,” he said referring to the Abu Dhabi GP.
“With the relative stability in the regulations between 2017 and ’18, it means a lot of the data we’ve gathered, especially over the last few races, will still stand us in good stead over the winter and help inform the all-important decisions we make on next year’s package.”
The main story around McLaren, however, is how this season finally was the straw that broke the camel’s back with Honda, with a change to Renault for next year creating aspirations for potential victories.
In the build-up to the two parties final race together, the Head of the Japanese manufacturer’s F1 operation, Yusuke Hasegawa, put the blame of this year’s failures at Honda being overambitious with the changes they introduced.
“From last year to this year, we completely changed the configuration concept of the engine,” he said. “We tried to do a little bit too much, the modification, so that’s why I have decided to keep the concept for next year so that from a reliability point of view we are pretty much confident.
“We need to squeeze more performance from the same concept of the engine, so that’s what we are currently doing.”
While that development will go to their 2018 project with Toro Rosso, completing this year, Boullier insists the goal remains the same at the season finale and to end the disappointing failure of their project on a positive note.
“I know I can speak for the whole team when I say that each and every one of us embark on our final Grand Prix weekend as McLaren Honda in Abu Dhabi with both optimism and respect,” he stated.
“Every single person has worked incredibly hard over the past three years and remained committed through the highs and lows we’ve experienced together until the very last race. All of us will go into the weekend with exactly the same aim — to work hard and do everything we can to finish the season positively.”
