Button says McLaren don't yet know where they stand, while Alonso expecting "a lot of performance gains in the next couple of months"
Thursday 17 March 2016 10:31, UK
Jenson Button says McLaren must show a greater rate of development in 2016 if they are to make bigger strides up the grid than last season.
The second year of the revived McLaren-Honda partnership begins amid low-key expectations after a solid but unspectacular pre-season. The new MP4-31 showed vastly improved reliability over its predecessor but the team clocked just the 13th-best time at the second test.
After finishing ahead of only Manor in the Constructors' Championship in 2015, McLaren's first aim is to move back into the midfield and Button says constant improvements are required on both the chassis and engine.
"I don't know yet, because we don't know where we stand," Button said when asked what would be considered success for McLaren in 2016.
"It won't be winning races - that would be great success if we can achieve that. But seeing improvement and building on what we have in race one and seeing more of an improvement than we saw last year.
"We did improve but it wasn't enough. We need to have a bigger improvement curve throughout the season.
"Reliability is much better, deployment is much better, [we] still work needed on outright power and overall downforce."
Team-mate Fernando Alonso said in Melbourne on Thursday he doesn't "think anyone in the team is targeting any special position right now" with the Woking squad first keen to see how they stack up in this weekend's season opener.
But the Spaniard believes improvements to Honda's power unit mean they finally have a more solid base from which to build and can make the gains required through the 21-race, eight-month season.
"I think we will have some more power compared to testing, but I don't think it's a high number unfortunately," he said.
"But it will be a constant evolution. The power unit this year is more robust. It's something we wanted last year because it was a little bit random what we got from the power unit and we were not able to control in a precise way what we were having in terms of performance.
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"This year we know more or less what we have and we know what to do in the next steps. So that's a very positive thing and it's more or less the same with the car, I expect a lot of performance gains in the next couple of months.
"We are in a better position. Maybe right now, here in Australia, the potential is still unlocked and we are not totally happy with our performance, but we have all the ingredients this year to enjoy the development rate and the races a little bit more."
The first race of the 2016 F1 season, the Australian GP, is exclusively live on Sky F1. The race in Melbourne starts at 5am on Sunday March 20. Or watch for £6.99 without a contract, on NOW TV.
