McLaren racing director Eric Boullier has said that the team will not waste too much time celebrating Jenson Button’s eighth-place finish at last weekend’s Monaco Grand Prix, believing that to be just the beginning of a new dawn for the British outfit.
Since rejoining forces with power unit supplier Honda for the 2015 season, McLaren has encountered a number of technical issues with its new car, the MP4-30, that had prevented it from scoring any points before the race in Monaco last weekend.
Button finished the race in eighth place to score four points, which are the first of the second McLaren-Honda era. Although Boullier was pleased, the Frenchman said that the team had far loftier ambitions.
“Since the beginning of the season we’ve been consistent in our messaging: we’re all working extremely hard, and the result of that arduous toil is steady improvement,” Boullier said after the race.
“Thanks to Jenson’s eighth place, our renewed McLaren-Honda partnership was rewarded with its first world championship points – a result that underlines that steady improvement.
“Okay, we’ve now squirrelled away four world championship points, but, although Jenson drove very well, we won’t waste time celebrating that milestone.
“Yes, it’s encouraging, but our ambitions run to far greater heights than eighth places. And we’ll achieve them, believe me.”
In spite of this strong showing, McLaren heads to next weekend’s Canadian Grand Prix expecting to struggle thanks to the engine-focused nature of the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve.
Nevertheless, with a series of updates for the MP4-30 car scheduled for the rest of the season, the team could yet continue to make – as Boullier put it – “steady improvement” and make a regular return to the top ten.