Jenson Button believes McLaren will perform better at the Canadian Grand Prix than many observers expect thanks to upgrades and the car's characteristics.
Honda is upgrading its turbo while there is also a new fuel from ExxobMobil in Montreal, which should provide additional performance at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve. With McLaren focusing on making its car aerodynamically efficient in order to compensate for its power unit deficit, Button believes Canada should actually suit it fairly well.
"For big points, I think it’s going to be a while before we’re actually going competitive enough to fight for big points, but we are making good progress," Button said. "People would think that this isn’t a circuit that would suit our car, but it’s going to be alright.
"We’ve come here with some upgrades, which should help us. It’s not big but it should help us. We are very efficient in terms of our car. I know that ExxonMobil had been working very hard with Honda with fuel. We have an upgrade here, which should help in that areas, so, yeah, we’re positive."
Team-mate Fernando Alonso agrees McLaren should be targeting a similar level of performance to recent races having qualified in the top ten on the last two occasions.
"I don’t think we have a specific target to achieve here. We want to do our best and it will be a good test on completely different circuit to Barcelona and Monaco where the power effect is a little bit higher here. Hopefully we can still score points, be in Q3 again for the third consecutive time and these sorts of things will become a normality."
Romain Grosjean column: Racing on two wheels
Chris Medland's 2016 Canadian Grand Prix preview
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