Martin Whitmarsh believes the old phrase 'discretion is the better part of valour' will serve McLaren well this weekend.

Valencia's newly-designed street circuit, with the Mediterranean and harbour serving as a dramatic backdrop, makes its Formula One debut on Sunday in the guise of the European Grand Prix.

As no F1 driver or car has yet to snake its way around the 5.440 kilometre track, the temptation would be to go all guns blazing in practice tomorrow and rack up as many laps as quickly as possible.

But McLaren F1 CEO Whitmarsh said: "In terms of car set-up, we need to remember that, like Monaco, the track will be green and dusty on the opening day of practice.

"That sometimes tempts you into playing with set-up more than you would like, so you need to resist that temptation and let the track come to the car.

"The most important thing is to be thorough, methodical and iterative.

"Although we arrive at a new race track having undertaken a huge amount of research and armed with an enormous amount of data, the reality is it's really only the starting point for our engineering team.

"We begin practice the way we would at any other circuit, but in this instance, we need to pay particular attention both to driver feedback and the data generated from the car.

"The important thing is not to react too hastily - it's vital you don't end up going down the wrong path, because you only have a limited amount of time to tune the set-up before qualifying."