The Italian said that, thus far, the car has performed as it was expected to and stressed that adding more overall grip remains the priority as the team embarks on a busy development programme.
McLaren has enjoyed an encouraging two days of testing in Bahrain so far, although it lost some valuable track time with a fuel tank issue on Thursday, which interrupted a race run.
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“I think some of the weaknesses have been improved,” he said. “For instance, we are I would say happier with the grip at the rear axle, which was one of the aspects that we wanted to work on. Overall there is more grip in the car.
“There are some aspects that we still have some work to improve, save the fact that the major performance opportunity remains overall grip.
“It's not like you need to correct features, you just have to put more grip on the car, which mainly comes from aerodynamic performance.
“But we have some more margin to improve, also from a mechanical point of view. And also in terms of interaction with the tyres. So in all these three aspects we plan to bring developments over the course of the season.”
Source: Autosport