Stoffel Vandoorne expressed positivity after McLaren amassed substantial mileage during Thursday’s test day at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, after a disrupted start to the week.
Vandoorne completed only 38 laps on Tuesday, having stopped three times, twice because of a loss of electrical power, and once through a hydraulic issue.
Fernando Alonso, meanwhile, missed almost seven hours of track time on Wednesday after an oil leak necessitated an engine change, leaving McLaren at the foot of the lap charts.
However, Vandoorne was able to enjoy a trouble-free day in the MCL33 on Thursday, as he racked up 151 laps, which included a race simulation.
“It’s always very important [to test] as during a race simulation for example you test the stress on the car, the cooling of the car, all the unexpected things,” he said.
“To be honest everything went very smoothly during the race simulation we did, there was no surprises, no major problems.
“I think tomorrow Fernando will have the last day in the car, there will be some long runs planned as well to check reliability because in the end you know before having a good result you need to go to the finish first so today was important.”
Vandoorne wound up sixth overall, his best time coming on Hypersoft tyres, 1.6s behind Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel, who also clocked his quickest lap on the new-for-2018 pink-banded compound.
Pressed further on the state of the car, he said: “I think both myself and Fernando, we’ve had very positive feeling in the car since the start of testing.
“I think today with the running we did that just confirmed my feeling.
“Obviously there’s a few areas we have to work on, our car in Melbourne will be quite different, there will be a lot of updates coming.
“Everything we learned here we need to carry forward, learn about it, and the car or package we have in Melbourne will be quite different so we’ll have to try and understand that there.”
