Such a troublesome week during the first winter test for McHonda, but good ‘ol Fred knows the best way to distract from his teams woes is to divert attention elsewhere.
During a recent interview with the Spanish media, Alonso call for his fans to remain cautiously optimistic for his chances in the Honda powered McLaren.
“I understand the pessimism because we haven’t had a good week,” he added. “We have had a lot of problems, but it doesn’t make sense to put us in last place.”
“For being such a difficult week, we have picked up a lot of useful information.”
“No team has shown their maximum potential, none of it matters until Australia.”
This much is true, indeed in the past we’ve often seen headline quick times from the likes of Ferrari and McLaren. The Italians no doubt keen to keep their devoted masses happy along with the bosses. And who can forget the ballistic times set by the 2013 McLaren Mercedes when the factory made a critical mistake when building the car. A suspension component had been fitted incorrectly to the car – it was simply the wrong way round – and the unexpectedly low ride height suggested that the MP4-28 could be the car to beat.
With that in mind, Alonso believes fans should not read into the test run results too much and he plans on combating the pessimism. He does however mention another team who’s be quietly just cracking on without fuss.
“The team I most fear is Red Bull,” admitted Alonso.
Historically Red Bull have often looked rather conservative during initial runs during the winter and this year is no exception.
“I haven’t seen anything from Red Bull, yet. They always do the same thing and in Australia will have a car that is nothing like this one”
“I won’t make any predictions on how hard it’ll be to beat Mercedes because this isn’t football- it depends on the fuel load, tires, time of day etc.”
Perhaps Fernando hoping (unrealistically) that McLaren Honda’s woes could be similar to that of Red Bull’s in 2014? With crazy tight packaging and a hugely unreliable Renault Power Unit, the RB10 of 2014 failed spectacularly during the first tests in Jerez and yet was surprisingly fast come Melbourne.
With only three weeks to go until Australia, could there be hope after all?
Voted no. But I hope for young stoffel they can pull it off.
I voted no. Apparently McLaren used 5 engines during last weeks test. And Honda themselves have said they don’t yet know what is causing some of the problems. Too little time before Melbourne to fix all the problems.
I voted no, but I’d really like to be wrong.