Jenson Button is certain McLaren is “heading in the right direction” despite struggling for results so far this season.
McLaren has yet to make it through to Q3 with either car in any of the opening three races, with Stoffel Vandoorne delivering the team’s only point-scoring result with tenth place in Bahrain. While flashes of pace - such as third quickest in FP2 in Bahrain - have suggested there is more to come from McLaren, the results have been frustrating but Button is confident in the overall progress being made.
“The last couple of races have been a bit like rolling the dice for us, and we haven’t managed to hook up the perfect weekend yet,” Button said. “We’ve seen some promising results on a Friday and Saturday, but over a long Sunday afternoon race we’ve found it more difficult to maintain our pace.
“The car feels good and we’re definitely heading in the right direction, but we need to keep pushing and working hard to bring more improvements and power for us to see further progression.”
Following the problems the team faced in China, Button is hopeful the track in Russia will allow McLaren to maximise the potential of its car.
“We knew China would be a tricky circuit for us over a race distance, and we struggled for pace with our tyres towards the end. Hopefully Sochi will be an easier race to manage tyre-wise; we’re consistently putting new parts on the car, and we saw improved reliability at the last race. It’s easy to say we deserved to take more from the first three races, but we need to pull together all of the elements over all three days to give ourselves a fighting chance of scoring some points.”
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