Jenson Button feels that his eighth place finish was the maximum he could have achieved in his McLaren-Honda at the German Grand Prix.
The Briton finished ahead of Valtteri Bottas’ Williams, after the Finn attempted an audacious two stop strategy, as well as the Force India of Sergio Perez, as McLaren continue to show signs of progress.
The result comes despite the weekend seeing Button struggle for mileage in practice, due to a combination of an eye irritation on Friday and reliability complications on Saturday morning.
His pace in the latter stages of the race was also hampered by the necessity to fuel save, as the Honda power unit continues to be the most fuel inefficient. The only blot on an otherwise promising Sunday.
“We had to do a fair amount of fuel-saving, particularly in the last 10 laps,” Button stated. “In fact, I went off the circuit towards the end, just because I was doing so much fuel-saving that I hit the brakes and they were just stone cold. I hadn’t even been braking hard.
However, he added: “At the end, I was able to pick off Valtteri, who was struggling on his tyres. It feels satisfying to have beaten both Williams, but eighth was as good as it was going to get today – we were 20 seconds behind the car in front, and there’s still quite a bit to go before we catch those guys.
“We’ve made good progress. We’re consistently fighting in the points, and the team are doing a great job this year, bringing something new to pretty much every single race. I want to say thank-you and well done to the whole team for their efforts.”
McLaren head into the summer break seventh in the Constructors’ standings and only three points adrift of Toro Rosso, who failed to score at Hockenheim.
