Boullier believes McLaren are on the right path

McLaren-Honda racing director Eric Boullier is confident about the prospects of his team. The Frenchman is delighted with McLaren’s improvements this year, and he targets further steps forward. However, he refused to specify the Woking-based team’s exact goals for 2017.

McLaren endured a difficult start in 2015 when it revived its collaboration with Japanese engine manufacturer Honda. The relationship of the two parties was strained after the unsuccessful first period.

The clash of view led to a change on the Honda side. The boss of Honda’s F1 project Yasuhisa Arai was replaced by Yusuke Hasegawa in February. The collaboration has improved since then which was also bolstered by improvements of the powertrain.

Asked about next year’s targets, Eric Boullier, McLaren’s racing director said he expects further improvements despite the uncertainty because of the sweeping technical changes.

“Doing better than ’16. Obviously we don’t have any numbers in terms of ranking in the championship, or targets like this. There is still a huge amount of work to be done in Woking and in Japan, so we’ll see next year what we have as a package.”

“We’ll see how fast or quick we can develop the car next year and then we will draw a line about where we want to be. But we just want to be on the move now. We were ninth last year in the championship, sixth is very likely this year obviously. We just want to better next year.“

McLaren has reorganized its structure recently with the arrival of former Volkswagen boss Jost Capito. The German took on his new role as CEO in September which includes more of a holistic view on the McLaren Group rather than a specific role inside the company’s F1 project.

Asked how his position as racing director has changed with the newcomer, Boullier answered that his role remained intact.

“My position exactly the same, racing director, his position is to be CEO, which is to different roles within the company. One is obviously being in charge of the business and more factorybased and the other is in charge of the racing,” said the former Lotus team principal.