“It’s been a busy day today. The car wasn’t too bad at the end of this afternoon’s session – and I was able to get a decent laptime despite not feeling totally comfortable with the car.

“We’ve been struggling a little bit with the set-up. It doesn’t feel like the car’s performing in all the areas we expected: we need to see whether the issue with the car’s balance is down to the upgrade or just an unsatisfactory set-up.

“It does feel like we’ve found some further improvements since Malaysia, and we’ll spend this evening looking at what elements of the new package we choose to take forward into the rest of the weekend.”

Button satisfied with his car

Photo by: xpb.cc

JENSON BUTTON - MP4-26A-04

P1 programme 22 laps 1m40.940s (+2.201s) 4thP2 programme 31 laps 1m37.935s (+0.247s) 3rd

“This morning was reasonably good and the car was working well – it’s a good car to drive. For the afternoon, we tried a few things and didn’t really improve the balance of the car, so we’re going to look at why the changes didn’t really give us the improvement we expected.

“The car felt reasonably strong on the Prime tyre but less so on the Option. So it’s not been a perfect afternoon but we have a lot of information on the changes we made, so we can hopefully work on improving the set-up tomorrow.

“It’s not as hot as it was in Malaysia, so I don’t think the tyres will be as much of an issue to look after as they were in Malaysia. If we sort out the balance tomorrow, we’ll be closer to Red Bull.”

MARTIN WHITMARSH - Team principal, Vodafone McLaren Mercedes

We spent the morning conducting aerodynamic tests

Martin Whitmarsh

“It was a productive day – we spent the morning conducting aerodynamic tests and we limited each driver to just one set of Prime tyres. That helped us draw some productive conclusions as we evaluate this weekend’s suite of upgrades and decide what to progress and what will need more development.

“This afternoon was a bit more frustrating: neither Lewis nor Jenson really found a satisfactory balance. They didn’t feel as comfortable as we hoped they would be.

“But we’ve got some very good information and, as always, I think our engineers will take every opportunity to look over that and turn it into something productive for tomorrow.”

Source: McLaren

We want your opinion!

What would you like to see on Motorsport.com?

Take our 5 minute survey.

- The Motorsport.com Team

Read and post comments

Share Or Save This Story

Copy link

Share on Viber

Previous article Ferrari Friday Report

Next article Ferrari - A busy day in foggy Shanghai

Top Comments

There are no comments at the moment. Would you like to write one?

View More & Comment

Latest news

Inside the competition building F1’s future engineering talent

Formula 1

F1 Formula 1

United States GP

26 min

Inside the competition building F1’s future engineering talent

Toyota clinches 2026 NASCAR Cup manufacturer championship early after dominant season

NASCAR Cup

NAS NASCAR Cup

Phoenix II

7 h

Toyota clinches 2026 NASCAR Cup manufacturer championship early after dominant season

Tyler Reddick really needed NASCAR Phoenix win for several reasons

NASCAR Cup

NAS NASCAR Cup

Phoenix II

7 h

Tyler Reddick really needed NASCAR Phoenix win for several reasons

Bubba Wallace laments mistake after heartbreaking Phoenix loss

NASCAR Cup

NAS NASCAR Cup

Phoenix II

8 h

Bubba Wallace laments mistake after heartbreaking Phoenix loss

Feature

Discover prime content

How levelling the playing field isn’t antithetical to the principles of F1

Formula 1

By Pat Symonds

How levelling the playing field isn’t antithetical to the principles of F1

Lights, Camara, action: How Haas picked F1's latest rookie for 2027

Formula 1

Singapore GP

By Jake Boxall-Legge

Lights, Camara, action: How Haas picked F1's latest rookie for 2027

Employing team orders can simply be a matter of common sense

Formula 1

By Kevin Turner

Employing team orders can simply be a matter of common sense

Why Christian Horner sees history repeating itself for Adrian Newey at Aston Martin

Formula 1

Singapore GP

By Ronald Vording

Why Christian Horner sees history repeating itself for Adrian Newey at Aston Martin

Subscribe and access Motorsport.com with your ad-blocker.

From Formula 1 to MotoGP we report straight from the paddock because we love our sport, just like you. In order to keep delivering our expert journalism, our website uses advertising. Still, we want to give you the opportunity to enjoy an ad-free and tracker-free website and to continue using your adblocker.

You have 2 options:

Become a subscriber.
Disable your adblocker.

Subscribe now Already subscribed? Sign in here

Already disabled your adblocker?
Reload page

Manage Alerts