Boullier blasts 'selfish' teams for blocking F1 test change

McLaren racing director Eric Boullier has hit out at the two Formula 1 teams who blocked any possible date change for this week's pre-season test in Barcelona for having "selfish interests" as snow scuppered much of Wednesday's running.

Cold conditions and a worsening forecast prompted teams to raise the idea of changing the planned schedule on Monday, proposing a scrapping of Wednesday's running in favour of testing on either Friday or the following Monday instead.

Unanimous agreement was required from the teams to change the schedule, but was not achieved.

Heavy snow early on Wednesday saw the session stay under a red flag for the first three hours of the day as the medical helicopter could not take off.

While the track went green at midday, just two installation laps have been completed at the time of writing, and with no firm plans for any meaningful running to take place through the remainder of the day, the teams have effectively lost one-eighth of their pre-season test running.

Speaking to Sky Sports, Boullier slammed the two teams that blocked the possible date change, saying that they acted only in self-interest by doing so.

"To change testing dates, we would have required unanimity, so that means all the teams would have needed to be in agreement to change the date. It appears that two teams did not want to change the date yesterday," Boullier said.

"It's obviously wasted money. We decided to save costs. We need these eight days to offer a decent show on-track for race one, covering reliability issues and everything we need to cover.

"We spent the money to be here. The track is booked for two weeks anyway, so we had the possibility to move that day to another one later. We know the forecast is better on Sunday or Monday.

"That's purely wasted money on selfish interests."