Button and Alonso praise positive Friday for McLaren
Jenson Button proved a happy man after the first two free practice sessions of the Chinese Grand Prix weekend. McLaren Honda therein enjoyed a positive day, eventually seeing their drivers set the 10th and 12th fastest times.
The MP4-30 appears to behave fairly well around the fast sweeps of the Shanghai International Circuit, although it is still too tricky to get an accurate read on performance as various cars were running on different fuel loads, and a mid-session yellow-flag period (to retrieve Felipe Massa’s car) meant that some drivers were compromised while attempting to set lap-times on fresh Option rubber.
Button proved satisfied with the progress compared to Malaysia.
“Irrespective of today’s finishing position, the feeling with the car is good. There’s still plenty of room for improvement, but I’m looking forward to the rest of the weekend nonetheless. There’s been progress today – hashtag progress!”
The Brit however is unsure about the car's race pace, noting that setup changes may be need to resolve this issue.
“The car feels nice to drive – especially when we’re running on the Option tyre. However, our one-lap pace seems to be better than our performance over a long run, which is a turnaround from how we went in Malaysia. But I think we can make some improvements in that area for tomorrow."
Team mate Fernando Alonso highlighted the team is making progress thanks to a wide range of updates.
“It’s been a very positive Friday for us – I enjoyed both sessions. We completed our aero programme during the morning, and then focused on set-up work this afternoon.
“All the updates we brought here seem to be working as we’d expected, and they’ve put us closer to the mid-pack. It’s very encouraging to see that we’re moving firmly in the right direction – it’s a question of time as to when we’ll become competitive.
Yasuhisa Arai from Honda highlighted that improvements on the power unit's hardware reliability has led the team to be able to adjust the energy management system to cater for the needs of both Fernando and Jenson. I’m looking forward to a further step tomorrow.
