Jenson Button said Honda’s energy deployment woes left him and team-mate Fernando Alonso as “sitting ducks” during the Russian Grand Prix, as the pair sometimes had to cope with a 45kph deficit.
McLaren-Honda had travelled to Sochi with little expectations but saw its two MP4-30s round up the top 10 on the road, although Alonso was then demoted to 11th because of a five-second penalty for exceeding track limits.
While Button made the most of an attrition race to climb to P9 by the chequered flag, the Briton admits he spent the entire afternoon fighting a rearguard action.
“A big thing for us is deployment and fuel saving because we’re not deploying for very long on the straights so you’re using more fuel,” said the 2009 world champion.
“We knew that we would were going to get trounced in the race from Lap 1 really having to fuel save every lap. Even with the two Safety Cars we had to save a lot.
“And cars are overtaking us in places you would not expect. Into Turn 12-13, if I don’t deploy they’re coming at me sort of 40-45kph quicker.
“I haven't got DRS and they have, I haven't got deployment and they have, so it's a massive closing speed.
“It’s really tricky because I’m looking at my mirrors not knowing where [the car behind] is going to end up.”
Button noticed no breakthrough in terms of overall competitiveness, but the 35-year-old took satisfaction from his team sampling an updated power unit – though Alonso retains priority –, adopting an aggressive approach, and eventually maximising everything on race day.
“It is not massive progress in terms of pace but we did a lot of stuff with the set-up this weekend, which will be interesting to see whether that pays off or not. We also have a lot of useful data on the engine.
“If we had a competitive car, we would have been competing at the front because we had the perfect race.
“As a team, we did a good job. We did the best possible.”
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