Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsMcLaren

Button excited by McLaren future

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Jenson Button says McLaren sees “a great future” after making rapid progress since the end of pre-season testing.

The Honda power unit proved troublesome throughout the winter, with McLaren completing limited mileage and having to turn the engine down to make it to the end of the opening race in Australia. The Malaysian Grand Prix saw the team make a clear step forward, racing competitively before both cars retired.

Asked how big an improvement McLaren can make this weekend, Button replied: “Hopefully very big!

“It’s always tricky when you start off in the winter with not doing much mileage. I think for everyone it was a big surprise to see us finish in Melbourne. The outside world probably didn't think we made a big step from Melbourne to Malaysia but we did, it was very, very big. We weren't able to finish the race but we got a lot of useful information again for another big step forward.

“So we’ve got to see what we’ve got here. There’s another long straight here which makes it a little bit tricky, but we’re all working very well together. I feel that we still haven’t got the best out of what we have right now so hopefully we can do that this weekend and there’s a lot in the pipeline for the future.

“A lot of people have asked me how I’m so positive and how the team are so positive and upbeat and it is because we see a great future, it’s just a lot of hard work now improving before we can get there.”

Click here for Chris Medland's Chinese Grand Prix preview.

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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.