Practice report

A difficult Friday practice for McLaren at Silverstone

Sergio Perez: "I think we’re in a similar position to the last race, and still quite far from the front."

Jenson Button (FP2: 133.740s (+1.492s), 29 laps, P11th): “Despite this morning’s washed-out session, I think we got in all the running that we needed this afternoon, and we managed to get through most of our programme – including some running on Pirelli’s test tyre.

Jenson Button, McLaren MP4-

Photo by: XPB Images

“The car doesn’t feel too bad out there, and the balance is reasonable – it’s better than it was in Canada – but we’re still some way off the pace.

“Still, the engineers have lots of data to analyse, so they’ll be able to find out whether the new parts have made the improvements that they’d predicted.”

Sergio Perez (FP2: 1m34.130s (+1.882s), 29 laps, P14th): “The second session was quite productive; we managed to do a lot of work and run through all our preparations, so it wasn’t a waste of a day.

Nevertheless, I think we’re in a similar position to the last race, and still quite far from the front. We’ve worked to improve ride-quality – and I think we’ve made a step forward in that area.

“However, not everything we tried today worked properly, so I still think we can aim to turn this weekend around.”

Martin Whitmarsh - Team principal, Vodafone McLaren Mercedes: “We do seem to have been affected by an unusually high number of rained-out Friday practice sessions this year. While it’s the same for everyone, it can be frustrating when you’re trying to run through a large and intensive programme of testing.

“While we were able to get quite a lot of mileage under our belts, there’s still plenty of work left to do. It’s been a difficult day, but with drier weather forecast for the next two days, we’re hopeful of making progress.”

Vodafone McLaren Mercedes