Humiliating 2015 'good for McLaren' - boss

Jan.13 (GMM) McLaren's abysmal season was actually "good" for the team, boss Eric Boullier says.

Following the hype of Honda's return to F1 last year and the reunion of the formerly-dominant Anglo-Japanese collaboration, McLaren slumped to the horror low of just ninth at the end of the world championship campaign.

Boss Boullier admits the humiliation was tough for the team to digest.

"McLaren is a big team, Honda is a big company and both have a great heritage," he is quoted by The Sun newspaper.

"To keep the trust of the people, the credibility, the morale high, it's a hard job. But what we saw was a lot of success in building for the future.

"In some way the bad will be good for McLaren because it brought humility, and strangely maybe, the atmosphere in the company was quite good," Frenchman Boullier was quoted as saying on Wednesday by the correspondent Ben Hunt.

"I'm not saying people were excited by the results - everybody was frustrated - but the atmosphere, the commitment of the people, the understanding, were huge.

"Either the system explodes, or everybody regroups. I guess there was a sense within McLaren to regroup," he added.

Interestingly, it is McLaren-Honda that was named by Pirelli to accompany top teams Ferrari and Red Bull to the wet-tyre test at Paul Ricard later this month.

World champion Mercedes' apparent decision to sit out the session was a surprise for some, but a spokesperson for the German team said: "We are happy for others to do the work.

"This allows us to focus on the design of our (2016) car," the spokesperson is quoted as saying by France's Canal Plus.