Throughout the year, the MP4/8 would prove to be on average the second-fastest car of the season, once again behind a Williams team now spearheaded by the returning Alain Prost. Born from the need for McLaren to reinvent themselves somewhat following years of carrying Honda power, the MP4/8 would mark a return to running under propulsion provided by the Blue Oval, a significant departure from the screaming Japanese V12’s of previous years.įeaturing advanced electronic aids in a bid to keep pace with championship rivals Williams, and the dominant FW14 of 1992, the new for ‘93 MP4/8 would mark a significant technical achievement by the Woking team even if expectations would be firmly held in check following a troubled pre-season and the ongoing contractual negotiations with star driver Ayrton Senna – negotiations that would remain unresolved until well into the start of the new campaign.Īlongside Senna for 1993 would be highly rated American Michael Andretti in the sister machine, the 31-year-old 1991 PPG Ind圜ar World Series champion having a troubled part season with the squad before eventually head back state side to be replaced by tester and former Lotus star, Mika Häkkinen. "Over the weekend we’ll work hard to get everything prepared for next week, with the aim of getting as much time on track as possible. We’re definitely ahead of where we were last year in terms of system checks and integration, so at the second test we’ll be able to focus more on race simulations and setup, as well as characterising our package’s performance.”Īlonso agreed that the setback was not the end of the world for the team: "Overall, we’ve managed a good number of laps during this test, which means we have a lot of data to analyse and learn from," the Spaniard said. “Over the course of the first four days in Barcelona we’ve done a good amount of running and already learned a lot about our package, which should stand us in good stead for next week. Testing is testing, and it gives us the opportunity to identify and work on reliability issues before we start the season. "It’s always frustrating when a small issue hampers your running for much of a day, but thankfully it’s relatively minor and we can now look to preparing the car for the second test on Tuesday. “Unfortunately, the coolant leak we experienced on the car today was in a tricky position, which meant it took longer than usual to locate and fix," explained Director of Engineering Matt Morris.
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