Jenson Button pleased with MP4-27 reliability as he tops 100 laps and says the team just have to keep pushing on with development.
Jenson pleased with the MP4-27's reliability as he tops 100 laps
Jenson Button says McLaren know they have to keep pushing as hard as possible with the development of their MP4-27, despite the encouraging level of reliability the car continues to show in pre-season testing.
The former world champion took over the Mercedes-powered challenger from Lewis Hamilton for Thursday's penultimate day at the first Barcelona test and carried out a similar programme to the one his team-mate completed on Wednesday, focusing on set-up work over short runs in the morning before switching to longer simulations after lunch.
Like Hamilton, Button cleared a century of laps - 114 - and finished with a time of 1:23.918 which was good enough for fourth place on the timesheet - a day's work the Briton was more than happy with.
"We've done a lot of reliability work over the past three days - more than 100 laps on each day," he said.
"Most of that has been longer runs, getting used to the feeling of the car over a long-run and set-up work for the longer runs.
"We've also been really working hard to understand this year's Pirelli tyres and getting the car to work efficiently around them. That's a key part of the programme this winter."
Not straightforward
Button, who will wrap up the test for McLaren on Friday, says the Woking squad have to stay focused on improving their own package over the remainder of pre-season, with the first upgrade ahead of the opening race set to be fitted to the car in time for next week's final test.
"There are a lot of cars out there that look competitive: so we'll keep pushing," he added.
"We should hopefully bring our upgrade package to the next test and that will see us through to the first race in Melbourne."
Button added: "It's not a completely straightforward update, it's not just about bolting downforce on the car - it's slightly more than that I would say.
"We'll just hope we're going in the right direction. The wind tunnel says we are, so I'm looking forward to the update next week, then we can start balancing the car and finding a direction for the first race."
