Button expects quick progress after completing race

Jenson Button believes McLaren will be able to make rapid progress having completed the Australian Grand Prix.

Finishing 11th, Button managed a race distance for the first time in 2015 after McLaren was hit by reliability issues throughout pre-season testing. While he admits that the race was difficult to manage, Button says the mileage should allow McLaren and Honda to make vast improvements over the coming weeks.

“Points really don’t mean anything to us anyway right now, there’s so much more to achieve and to do really before we’re majorly competitive,” Button said. “But a good day for us. Our longest stint was 12 laps before this weekend so I think that’s pretty impressive. We’re obviously a long way off but still, it’s a good starting point.

“There was a lot of fuel saving in the race and it was pretty tough for me out there but I still enjoyed it. I had a little bit of a battle for about 20 laps with Perez which was quite fun. I didn’t expect that, and then it was just about bringing it home. There’s a lot of useful data there which can hopefully give us a big step forward in Malaysia.”

And Button also says he was able to gauge the relative strengths of the MP4-30 against other cars during the race.

“Compared to the Force India we’re quicker in the corners and I pull out a big advantage. With the Red Bull and Sauber we look sort of similar through the corners in different ways - high speed corners they’re better than us, low speed I think we’re as good if not better - obviously Mercedes are just better everywhere.”

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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.

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