McLaren must improve development rate - Button

Jenson Button says McLaren must improve its rate of development this season compared to in 2015.

Last year McLaren was hampered by a number of reliability issues with the new Honda power unit, leaving the team uncompetitive and often struggling to complete consistent running in order to develop the car.

Speaking about what would constitute a success for McLaren the year, Button said: "Seeing an improvement and building a lot on what we have from race one and seeing more of an improvement of what we saw throughout last year.

"We did improve but it wasn’t enough so we need to have a bigger improvement curve through this season, that’s what we need to see. Reliability is much better, deployment is much better, still work needed on outright power and overall downforce."

And Button says it is important McLaren recognises it needs to make big improvements on both the engine and aerodynamic fronts.

"Work has been flat-out at both factories. [The power unit] is definitely an improvement, but there’s still a lot we need to do before we are properly competitive. In terms of deployment it’s a big step forward but it brings us pretty close to other manufacturers. In terms of power we’ve still got a long way to go but also in terms of aerodynamics of the car we’ve still got a long way to go. There’s a lot of room for improvement and a lot of work in the pipeline.

"The important thing now is that we have reliability with the power unit so we can develop a lot faster, which is good to see. Aerodynamically we’ve had some improvements from winter to now but still there’s more needed and we’re pushing very hard to bring more downforce to every race, not just downforce but useable downforce."

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Technical analysis - Melbourne

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