Jenson Button says McLaren has "upgrades in every area" but will not be focused on scoring points at the Spanish Grand Prix.
McLaren has been making progress on a race-by-race basis so far this season, but its best result is Fernando Alonso's 11th place in Bahrain. With Honda improving its power unit, Button says there are updates on the chassis side too which he thinks could see it jump a tightly-packed the midfield.
"There’s upgrades in every area really," Button said. "We haven’t come here with a second of lap time, because that just doesn’t happen in Formula One these days, even when you start where we did. It’s a good chunk – there’s upgrades with the power unit, aerodynamically with the car, but also mechanically there are a few things as well, so it’s a good amount.
"It’s getting to the point where it’s a lot more difficult to have the same amount of progress (as previous races) percentage-wise. But we’ll have to see, I think the whole middle pack is very close and for the taking maybe."
And Button says he would rather McLaren is closer to the front but outside the points than in the top ten and further adrift of Mercedes.
"It depends on what other people do. If every other car has a good weekend it’s going to be very difficult to score points. But Fernando out-qualified one Red Bull, one Toro Rosso and one other car as well so it just means other people aren’t getting their weekends together.
"If we can get our weekend together, and they don’t, yes there’s a good chance of scoring a point but if we do we’re not going to be jumping up and down with joy because it’s not our aim. It’s more the gap to the front which is important to us; if the gap is eight tenths smaller or three tenths smaller that’s the thing that really matters to us rather than just P10."
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