McLaren delayed by fuel data issues

McLaren revealed that a telemetry issue prevented them from running the Honda-powered development car during the first day of private testing in Abu Dhabi.

Stoffel Vandoorne, the team’s reserve driver, was only able to complete three laps, without setting any time during the eight hours of testing this Tuesday. An electrical problem was suspected in the morning, forcing the team to carry out several checks.

The team indicated that a data exchange problem related to fuel caused the afternoon issues, in a statement. It was the same issue in the second session [which caused the red flag in the middle of the afternoon, ed.]. The last session [at the very end of the day, ed.] was better, but we still have some problems and the team is looking into it. Hopefully, they will arrive at a solution by tomorrow. It’s better that this happens in November rather than next year in Jerez. Every lap completed during these two days will be very important. We will then have two months to resolve the issues.

On the side of the Belgian driver, it is acknowledged that the program has suffered significant delays even though he hopes to be operating at full capacity before the end of these tests: “We obviously planned for more than three laps today, but we had some issues last night and were delayed this morning. Tomorrow, if we do more than that, it will be good! The goal of the test is to understand the collaboration between McLaren and Honda: it’s the first time we’re on the track working together, so all the operational work is a bit different. During these three laps, I was really able to provide some feedback, but obviously, everything was aimed at increasing power, so we haven’t run the engine at full power yet. We hope to do that before the end of the two days, [but] it’s very difficult to have impressions at this stage because we’ve only done installation laps with a few issues,” he stated to Autosport.