McLaren will conduct a fundamental review of all aspects of its car after the MCL33's pace came up short in the opening three rounds of the season.
The British team lies fourth in the constructors' standings after scoring points at every round this year but has not yet made an appearance in a Q3 qualifying session. It is that lack of one-lap pace that has caught the attention of racing director Eric Boullier and he believes his team simply set its targets too low at the start of the year.
"The car has matched all the targets so maybe that means maybe the targets were not the right ones," he said. "We need to revise, in terms of ambitions, what we need to achieve."
After spending the past three years putting pressure on engine partner Honda for its lack of performance, McLaren admitted it would be left with no excuses once it switched to Renault power over the winter. But at the opening three races, McLaren's fastest Q2 time has been on average 1.023s off the fastest Q2 time set by Red Bull, which also runs Renault engines. Boullier admits that kind of deficit in chassis performance is not acceptable.
"Obviously we have the same engine as Renault and Red Bull and we are behind so there is no hiding that fact," he added. "We need to understand why we are slow in qualifying, why we are better in the race and why we are behind the other Renault teams, full stop.
"There was obviously some questions asked in Bahrain, there is still an ongoing process because we have to address it and we will address it and we are about to address it."
Boullier explained that the car does not have any obvious vices, but is simply not fast enough in the corners and on the straights.
"The car is still very balanced," he said. "If you listen to the drivers they are happy with the balance of the car. Whatever you try and setup the car reacts accordingly so a bit more understeer, less understeer, more oversteer, one tenth better here, one tenth slower here so I think we have a good understanding of the car.
"I think the car has no nastiness, if you want, in terms of the design. We just need to make the car faster around the corner and in the straight line."
Asked if that simply equated to a lack of aero efficiency, Boullier said the problems were more complex than that.
"Well this is obviously one of the issues. Our top speed is not the best one because we are bottom in the ranking but it's not the only one. It's not as simple as this, you know. If it were a question of just driving the car it would be easy to fix so we have to address, I'm going to use the word fundamentally, all aspects of the car to make sure we are where we should be."
McLaren turned up to pre-season testing with a car that was, by its own admission, underdeveloped. Updates have arrived at the opening three rounds but Boullier said the biggest step in performance would come at the Spanish Grand Prix in May.
"We didn't turn up in Australia with the car we wanted because we were delayed for some reasons. A lot of parts are on the way to hit the track, for logistic reason it's very likely it's going to be Barcelona and from that point we will see performance-wise where we are."