Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsMcLaren

Button: McLaren-Honda progress 'very exciting'

Jenson Button says the McLaren-Honda project is "very exciting" to be a part of as the team continues to make rapid progress.

Issues with the Honda power unit left McLaren struggling for mileage in pre-season testing, and Button was comfortably off the pace in the Australian Grand Prix. However, with both cars reaching Q2 in Barcelona last weekend, the team has made big steps forward at every race.

Speaking to F1i during an exclusive interview, Button admits he didn't expect to be so uncompetitive in the opening rounds but says the progress made since then is almost as exciting as fighting at the front.

“It’s coming from a massive low, and I think everyone was quite surprised how slow we were at the start," Button said. "But we had a lot of reliability issues in the winter and we didn’t really run too much, so to be where we are now I think is fantastic. It’s very exciting seeing the progress.

"If we’d started sort of in the midfield and we’d made up a couple of places by now you’d find it quite boring but now with the massive progress that we make, it’s great. At some point it will stop, it will be harder to progress, but at the moment it’s still big strides that we’re taking every time we drive the car.

"So it’s very exciting. Obviously it’s not as exciting as fighting for the world championship, it’s not as exciting as fighting for race wins - it never is going to be - but it’s an exciting challenge all the same.”

Click here for a look at the radical Honda power unit design

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.