In May, the long stint of European races kicks off in beautiful and sunny Barcelona, where the McLaren team, based in not so sunny Woking believe they will they not score points until the first European race at Barcelona.
The reuniting of the most successful and most famous partnership in Formula One history has got off to a very poor start with the teams new MP4-30 lacking reliability with only Button starting the race in Australia with Kevin Magnussen (who stepped in to replace Alonso after his crash in testing) not even making it to the grid and although Button finished the race in Australia.
Neither Button or Alonso could emulate that in Malaysia where both cars retired, as well as the team’s poor reliability, they are seriously lacking in out-right pace keeping them even further away from the front-runners, but when will this improve for the British based team?
Despite all of this, Jenson Button remains positive and believes that the team did make progress in Malaysia and will continue to make big strides of progress in the coming races however he believes the team will not be challenging for points until the Spanish Grand Prix.
“We have a lot of work to do before we can think about that,” replied Button when asked on when McLaren could hope to challenge for wins.”
“For us the next step is to hopefully finish in front of a few of the cars we were racing with in this race, but I don’t think we will be fighting for points when we go to China”.
“Bahrain, maybe, if we make a small step before that race.”
“But I think it is probably going to be in Europe we start fighting for points, and that would be a massive step.
“There is a lot in the pipeline in terms of the power unit and aerodynamics for the next race.”
