Eric Boullier thinks he’s the man

Eric Boullier has not shown he's the man yet in all these years

McLaren's racing director Eric Boullier has defended his leadership of the Woking team, insisting he remains the right man to get McLaren back to the front of Formula 1.

Whilst the British team has made giant strides this year when compared to the previous three seasons with Honda power – it's points tally of 40 in five races is ten more than it managed during the entire 2017 season – it is still some way off the leading pace, with leaders Mercedes racking up 153 points and Renault customer Red Bull on double McLaren's tally.

There was some speculation that management changes could soon be on the cards at McLaren following the departure of technical director Tim Goss, though Boullier remained tight-lipped on any further changes.

The Frenchman did however insist he remains the right man to lead McLaren in the future and is confident of turning things round.

"We don't want to comment much about what we are doing [internally]," said Boullier. "Obviously we are trying to be the best and being the best means also looking at how we can be more efficient in terms of our organisation.

"It's part of life for a Formula 1 team to keep looking at how to deliver better and more.

"In my past life I've been managing, rebuilding, restructuring a few teams and I won with all of them in any category there was," he added.

"It's hard work. There's a lot of expectation obviously from McLaren and from a lot of people.

"I think I know my job and we need to make sure we can make it, deliver it on time. The timing needs to be the right time, not the wrong expectation.

"No orders are needed, we know what we need to do: we have to improve the reliability and we have to improve performance."