Stella believes Bahrain test confirmed Ferrari and Mercedes as ‘teams to beat’ as he assesses McLaren’s position

Andrea Stella feels that the second pre-season test in Bahrain confirmed Ferrari and Mercedes as the “teams to beat”, though the McLaren Team Principal believes that the papaya squad are “not far” away.

Following the completion of the first few days of testing at the Bahrain International Circuit, Stella had cautioned onlookers to “be careful looking too much into what we see in testing”, but suggested that the early indications were that Ferrari and Mercedes were at “the top of the list” in terms of competitiveness.

One week later – at the end of the second and final pre-season test – Stella shared an update on how he viewed the pecking order entering into the first race of the campaign, the Australian Grand Prix, on March 6-8, and reiterated his earlier viewpoint.

“In terms of understanding the competitive order, I would say that this test has confirmed that Ferrari and Mercedes look like the teams to beat,” said Stella.

“I think McLaren is not far – I think it’s good to see that we are part of the top four group, but I think these two teams seem to have shown a little bit of an advantage.”

Reflecting more widely on how McLaren’s programme had unfolded during the second test, Stella spoke positively about the learnings that the team can take forwards on the MCL40.

“Overall it’s been a positive testing session, especially here in Bahrain,” the team chief explained. “The car behaved quite reliably – we pretty much signed off all the test items that we had planned, from functionality, from reliability and from race-ability point of view.

“This has allowed us to go through lots of laps and lots of learning, and I think we are at the point in which we can say that the potential of the car has been relatively understood and exploited. Obviously it’s all new, and before every run you do there is something to learn.

“But overall I think we have added a little bit of performance every single day, just because we were in condition to test and experiment, and play with set-up and play with aerodynamic optimisation and tyres, and I would say play also with the exploitation and the optimisation of the power unit, which is definitely a big ticket item.”