McLaren will up the power of its Honda engine again this weekend in Bahrain before introducing a new-spec power unit at the Spanish Grand Prix.
McLaren has not qualified higher than the penultimate row of the grid this year, but has closed on the gap to the front of the grid at each round since the season-opener in Australia. It has been running its Honda power unit detuned to try to ensure reliability, but it is now confident it can up the power again in Bahrain this weekend.
"We know which step we can still get out of this engine, so already in Bahrain we can power up the power unit a little bit and in Barcelona we have another spec coming, so we will keep improving every race," racing director Eric Boullier said. "There was a major step in terms of the reliability package [in China], so there's no issue. This is a good achievement, and now we know we can power up the engine and with the same base we know we have some potential we can unlock with this engine, so it's okay."
However, Boullier would not predict the impact the new updates would have on McLaren's competitiveness, only confirming that the team is still targeting competitive results by the end of the year.
"I'm not saying any dates because every race we bring improvements. The potential of the engine we know is quite high, they have been quite ambitious because we keep repeating it but if you want to beat Mercedes you have to be better than them.
"So we know there is some potential in the engine, there will be a push for the European campaign and even on the car itself we have another strong aerodynamic package coming in Barcelona. The target is we want to be competitive by the end of the season. That means we can prove out the potential from both the engine and the organisation."