McLaren duo Jenson Button and Fernando Alonso have praised their team for their continued improvements ahead of this weekends Chinese Grand Prix. Button finished 10th in practice two with Alonso two places behind in 12th.
McLaren have been eliminated from Q1 in both races so far and have only had one car finish from the opening two races; by Jenson Button at the opening race in Australia.
Although they are still a long way off fighting for podiums, wins and championships, 2009 world champion Button has been impressed by the strides made by the team.
“We look reasonably good out there, but that can perhaps be explained by the fact that we seem to have been able to extract the maximum out of our car today, whereas perhaps some of the other teams haven’t,” he said.
“Still, the car feels nice to drive – especially when we’re running on the Option tyre. However, our one-lap pace seems to be better than our performance over a long run, which is a turnaround from how we went in Malaysia. But I think we can make some improvements in that area for tomorrow.
“Irrespective of today’s finishing position, the feeling with the car is good. There’s still plenty of room for improvement, but I’m looking forward to the rest of the weekend nonetheless. There’s been progress today – hashtag progress!”
Fernando Alonso hopes to be in the mid-pack for qualifying with the Spaniard still finding his way back to form after his pre-season testing crash.
“It’s been a very positive Friday for us – I enjoyed both sessions,” he said. “We completed our aero programme during the morning, and then focused on set-up work this afternoon.
“All the updates we brought here seem to be working as we’d expected, and they’ve put us closer to the mid-pack. It’s very encouraging to see that we’re moving firmly in the right direction – it’s a question of time as to when we’ll become competitive.
“Obviously, we began the season from a lower starting point than some of the other teams, so it’s been easier for us to make quick improvements, but the team is so focused and determined to improve – that’s very impressive.
“While it’s been great today to run in the middle of the pack – and I want to be able to maintain that sort of progress – we need to keep our feet on the ground: we saw in the first two races that the others tend to take a step forward in qualifying, so we’ll see what happens tomorrow.”
Image Courtesy Of McLaren F1 Team
