Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsMcLaren

Button: Honda has ‘quite a bit more power’

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Jenson Button says his McLaren-Honda has “got quite a bit more power” in Malaysia than at the opening race of the season.

The two McLarens qualified on the back row of the grid for the Australian Grand Prix, with Button finishing the race two laps down as Eric Boullier said Honda “downtuned everything” in Melbourne. Following Friday practice in Malaysia, Button says he can notice an increase in power which has helped the team look more competitive at Sepang.

“We learnt a lot,” Button said. “We tried a few things that definitely did not work for us but at least we know now. In terms of development with the engine and getting the maximum of what we have right now, we’ve learnt a lot already from the last race, so we’ve got quite a bit more power but still working on driveability and some areas, fine-tuning some things and other things we’ve made a big step in.”

However, Button warns McLaren not to get carried away just because it has made such an improvement over the past two weeks.

“We’ve both been running smoothly today with both cars, which is good. In terms of pace, the power unit … we’re maximising a lot more now in terms of the power unit itself but also the MGU-K and other areas. It’s basically getting more out of the current engine than what we had in the first race. It’s just through experience of running the whole race in Melbourne so that’s all good.

“Temperatures seem to be OK. We have some new parts, both cars are quite different today. Hopefully, we can put everything together tomorrow and find a little bit more pace.

“There’s progress but still a long way to go.”

Click here for Friday's gallery from the Malaysian Grand Prix

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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.