Jenson Button says it’s crucial that McLaren and Honda make sustained “big gains” throughout the season so they can work their way back to winning races again.
McLaren head into the first race of 2015 this weekend with a myriad of questions surrounding their likely competitiveness at Albert Park following the troubled, unreliability-plagued pre-season with Honda’s all-new power unit.
Although the reunited partnership finished bottom of both the mileage charts and combined Barcelona timesheet during the winter, the team and their drivers have remained bullishly optimistic that the MP4-30 represents a fundamentally strong, well-balanced car.
Button, a three-time Melbourne winner, admits that it’s the longer-term targets which are the main focus at McLaren on the eve of race one.
“We want to win races and scraping into the points here doesn’t interest us whatsoever. It’s the future of this team that’s interesting and we will always go out to do our best,” he said.
“The important thing for us is to see big gains throughout the year. It’s not being consistently in the points, it’s seeing big gains and hopefully fighting for victories.”
While the 35-year-old Button could be forgiven for becoming weary with McLaren’s increasing wait to return to the winner’s circle, the 2009 world champion says he is determined to help the team work through their growing pains with Honda and eventually get the most out of a car he believes during his time at Woking.
“The exciting thing is when you look at the car itself and the layout of the engine, it’s all very aggressive and it’s all to help with the aerodynamics of the car,” Button explained.
“It shows the connection between McLaren and Honda, how closely they are working together. It has hurt us a little bit in winter testing in terms of reliability but I really do think that this new car is important for the new partnership. The direction, the philosophy, ideas in terms of aerodynamics, it’s very different to any other McLaren you might have seen.
“The changes from the first test to second test, when we only did 60 laps overall, [produced] massive gains and now the driveability’s as good as anything I drove last year.
“So that is really good to see big steps forward.”
Confirming the trackside observations from experts during pre-season, Button said the MP4-30’s handling represented one of the biggest improvements over the 2014 machine.
“In terms of feel of how the car is and what you want the car to do, it does everything right and a lot better than last year. Last year it initially had a lot of downforce when you hit the brakes and when you turned in, but you lost all the front-end at apex,” he said.
“This car is very different and does what you expect it to do, so you can be very precise, which is very important for myself and also Fernando [Alonso]. As far as I can see with the data, we like very similar cars. So it does the right thing but it’s whether we have enough downforce in the end, which I feel this is a good start, but we don’t have enough to fight with Mercedes.”
Indeed, Button reckons none of Mercedes’ rivals are likely to topple the world champions and title favourites before the European season commences.
“It’s always going to be very difficult [to win] in a season where Mercedes start so strong,” he added.
“At the moment you would say you can’t see anyone else winning races for at least the flyaways. So it’s always going to be tricky.”