Button: Friday pace backs up McLaren optimism

Jenson Button says the pace shown by McLaren during Friday practice for the Canadian Grand Prix vindicates his optimism ahead of the race weekend.

While the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve requires strong power unit performance, Button was confident McLaren would perform well thanks to an aerodynamically efficient car. Having struggled with power unit problems in FP1, Button set an identical lap time to sixth-placed Valtteri Bottas on Friday afternoon and was left encouraged by McLaren's pace.

“We had lots of issues [on Friday] morning, many different issues and it was a very unlucky morning," Button said. "We actually changed the engine from FP1 to FP2 and the guys did an amazing job. We got out a little bit late but we managed a reasonable amount of running in FP2, so it was not too bad and we ended up in P7.

"The car is enjoyable to drive but there’s obviously a set of issues we need to resolve and we’ll be doing that [overnight]. We put the old engine back in for the afternoon and we had no issues.

"We just have to decide tonight with what engine we’ll run tomorrow, if it’s the new one that we put in today or it it’s the engine we used in the previous two races – we’ll see tonight but either way we’ll be fine.

"I said before people would be surprised by our performance on this track and I don’t think we’ll be worse than we were in Monaco this weekend. The car feels good but there’s still a lot of improvements needed.

"It’s very close in the middle of the pack. If I’d gone half a tenth quicker I would have been 4^th and if I’d been 0.2s slower I would have been 10^th or 12^th, so it's very close and it will be all about maximising what we have here."

Asked if McLaren can target reaching Q3 in qualifying, Button replied: "We’ll see…

"We cannot aim to be in the top 5, definitively not. We don’t have an engine upgrade, just a new turbo charger and the change was done not for performance but to get more efficiency and it will only benefit us in the race. We also have a new fuel here, which gives a tenth of a second and that obviously helps.

"You’ve got to aim high and going to try and get the best qualifying we’ve had all year – doing it here would be great."

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