McLaren's Matt Morris remains optimistic that the team can at least start the 2015 season competitively on a par with its 2014 effort despite a stuttering start to its new collaboration with Honda.

Giving the much anticipated MP4-30 its first public outing during pre-season testing in Jerez, the Honda-powered car endured a number of time consuming issues over four days, completing a relatively meagre 79 laps in the hands of Jenson Button and Fernando Alonso.

Despite this, drivers and team members remain upbeat about the car's potential, insisting the test in Jerez was predominantly to see whether the car is working fundamentally and identifying inevitable issues before establishing its true level of performance over the two remaining tests in Barcelona.

With this in mind, though engineering director Morris admits the issues – which came from both the chassis and the power unit – were frustrating given he felt it had gotten on top of the 'big problems' that scuppered its Abu Dhabi mileage, he says the signs are encouraging.

“We basically came out of the Abu Dhabi test with two or three pretty big problems, which we've actually sorted, so we were confident that we were going to have a trouble-free time. Unfortunately, we've had a few issues. They've been small, annoying issues, no major problems, but they've meant we've been sat in the garage for quite a long time.”

“The main thing coming out of this test was to check that the car architecture and the package worked - that was absolutely key because if we've got a problem there, it's a lot of work involved in changing coolers and installation so actually the main aim was to come here and check that, which we've done.”

With eight more days of pre-season testing before the team heads to Australia for the opening round of the season in Melbourne, Morris remains optimistic that it can use the two tests to get the team back to a level where it can at least challenge for points in the curtain raiser.

“I'm confident we can still do that. We're not running at full speed at the moment as we've got to make sure we get on top of the issues that we've got but, once we get on top of those issues, there's no reason why we can't be performing at least where we were last year.”