Jenson Button says "extreme" China tyre degradation just like winter testing again

Jenson Button has joined Lewis Hamilton in bemoaning the "extreme degradation" being experienced with the soft tyres in China.

The difficulties with tyres came amid what had always promised to be a busy day to McLaren owing to the fact the Woking team had brought a suite of new development parts to try on the underperforming MP4-28. The changes, which include a revised exhaust profile and new floor, are designed to bring the team closer to their traditional front-running rivals and Button said there was naturally still more performance to exploit after day one. "We've got obviously new parts on the car, which is great," he added. "I don't feel we have the best out of them yet but with some tweaking overnight hopefully we can find some more gains." Speaking later in McLaren's end-of-day press release, Button was somewhat more candid. "We can't yet conclusively tell if the upgrades we brought to this race have improved the car," he admitted. "They're perhaps not as big a step forward as we'd expected - the issues with the car are still there - but the car does feel a little bit better. "I don't think we'll be fighting at the front this weekend, but we'll definitely be fighting someone."