McLaren focused on unlocking race pace

ByAutoSport

Published 25/04/2016 at 13:19 GMT

McLaren must focus on unlocking its Formula 1 race pace as it has so far been unable to match the performance levels it can achieve on Fridays and Saturdays, according to Jenson Button.

Eurosport

Image credit: Eurosport

Reliability has improved this season and there have been signs of improvement from McLaren and engine supplier Honda at certain points during a race weekend, but the team has scored just one point in three races.

"The last couple of races have been a bit like rolling the dice for us, and we haven't managed to hook up the perfect weekend yet," said Button.

"We've seen some promising results on a Friday and Saturday, but over a long Sunday afternoon race we've found it more difficult to maintain our pace.

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"The car feels good and we're definitely heading in the right direction.

"But we need to keep pushing and working hard to bring more improvements and power for us to see further progression.

"It's easy to say we deserved to take more from the first three races, but we need to pull together all of the elements over all three days to give ourselves a fighting chance of scoring some points."

McLaren racing director Eric Boullier agreed that McLaren has plenty of work to do to ensure it delivers on race day.

"With each race weekend we're learning a lot about the strengths and limitations of our package," he said.

"Our development programme is relentless as we seek to achieve improved performances on a Sunday afternoon.

"We know there is a lot of potential in the MP4-31, but there's still some work to do both by McLaren and Honda to unlock it, which we haven't managed to do so far."

Honda chief Yusuke Hasegawa is happy with the progress the Japanese manufacturer is making.

"We think that our power unit is nearly there, so we're looking towards another solid weekend of running and hope that we can be in a position to score some points in the race on Sunday," he said.

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