Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsMcLaren

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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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.