McLaren 'eager' to get season started in Australia

McLaren boss Zak Brown has insisted that his team are 'eager' to get to Australia for the start of the Formula One campaign, and remains excited about the prospect of McLaren improving on their fortunes from last year with their new Renault engines.

Brown's team has suffered numerous grid penalties and engine reliability issues over the past few seasons, with their Honda parts proving not up to scratch in terms of power.

The contract with Honda has since been terminated, however, and McLaren are hoping for a good season with Renault providing the power.

"We’re very eager to get to Australia," said Brown at the Autosport International Show in Birmingham.

"We’ve obviously had a significant power deficit that we think Renault will fix for us and that should get us back towards the front of the field.

"What slot I don’t know, but it will be towards the front.

"We had a really good chassis last year. We know the majority of what we put on the chassis over the year correlated and worked," he added.

"The improvement that you saw over the year, the most significant part of that was our chassis development."

Renault achieved some success last season with their engines helping Red Bull to three Grand Prix victories, and Brown is hoping McLaren can see similar, if not better, results.

"They've got the power," Brown said of Renault. "Though they've got some reliability issues when they turn the power up.

"Mexico was a setting issue, but Max [Verstappen] did win the race in pretty dominant fashion, so they've got a fast engine.

"I actually think the top three are pretty close, and have all won races last year, so there's clearly not that big of a deficit between them.

"We have some areas we can improve, we're not perfect, but the lack of power was the single biggest area of weakness, so I think when we get the Renault in the back we should see a substantial difference in Australia.

"We're happy with our working relationship with Renault, and we should hopefully get back to where people are used to seeing McLaren at the front of the field.

"We think we can be on the podium, but it’s tough," he admitted.