Bahrain I, Day 3: McLaren test report

For the third day of the test in Bahrain, Jenson took over driving duties from Kevin Magnussen, continuing the general set-up and evaluative work that the Dane had initiated on Wednesday and Thursday.

Jenson completed a mammoth 103 laps today, a tally which included the MP4-29’s first full race-distance, which was completed in the afternoon.

Jenson said: “Today was a really busy session – my engineers looked exhausted afterwards, and I’ve never seen that before!

“It was good to put some laps on the car without any major issues. We actually did a race distance in the afternoon, and it was nice to do that so early in testing. Still, that session showed us we still have a lot of work to do.

“The thing we really need to focus on is fully understanding fuel-saving, and the communication required between the driver and engineer. I think we’ll get on top of things, though, because we’re traditionally very good at that.

“We’re in a reasonable position: today was positive because we gathered so much information. There’s still a lot of work to do before the first race; we’d like to be faster, but when you look at other test days, you’d say we’re in reasonable shape.”