PRESSURE BUILDS ON McLAREN TEAM

MCLAREN’S pre-season Formula One crisis has deepened after Fernando Alonso missed nearly seven hours of testing in Barcelona following another car failure.

With j ust two days of practice remaining before the season gets under way in Melbourne l ater this month, McLaren have now completed f ewer miles than any other team.

The British outfit have been desperate to make up for missed ti me after Alonso’s team-mate Stoffel Vandoorne broke down on Tuesday.

However, fewer than two hours had passed at Barcelona’s Circuit de Catalunya yesterday before two-time world champion Alonso stopped.

McLaren diagnosed the problem as an oil leak but, despite the incident taking place j ust before 11am, Alonso next emerged from his garage with only the final minutes remaining.

Alonso took his lap haul for t he day t o 57 but Mercedes completed 175 circuits, while Daniel Ricciardo, who set a track record yesterday to roar t o go t op of t he timesheets, managed 165 laps for Red Bull.

McLaren have now hit trouble in four of the five days of dry-weather running at Barcelona.

A faulty wheel nut wrote off an entire morning for Alonso on the first day of testing, while Vandoorne didn’t complete any laps during the afternoon of the second day due to a broken exhaust clip.