Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsMcLaren

Silverstone 'a massive test bed' for McLaren

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Jenson Button has described the British Grand Prix as "a massive test bed" for McLaren after struggling on Friday.

Both McLaren drivers were in the bottom six in both FP1 and FP2, with the team having to limit mileage on its power units. While Button also lost out on running due to car changes which took longer than planned,

“I don’t think we’ll be excited about getting in to Q2, just like we won’t be excited if we finish the race, we want obviously a lot more than that," Button said. "Again it’s all about still understanding the package and every time we get out the car we’re talking to Peter Prodromou [chief engineer] about how the car feels in the wind and the different angles of steering and everything.

"So it’s still a massive test bed at the moment, we’re not going to be looking for points this weekend unless something happens overnight, which I’ll be surprised. It’s still a very useful weekend and I want to have a great weekend in front of the home crowd, but that’s always going to be difficult. But they’ve been mega today, very supportive and it’s been a beautiful day for them as well so hopefully this will continue.”

Button did at least see some progress late on Friday following a number of set-up changes which were made to his McLaren.

“Yeah it was a lot better but there’s still a lot of work to do. We’re a long way behind, but there’s some improvements we can make tomorrow, some big changes hopefully with the car. It’s not going to be enough to qualify in to Q3 but we’ll get the best out of what we have.”

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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.