Button third in P1 and Magnussen second in P2 on opening day
Friday 17 October 2014 17:48, UK
Jenson Button believes McLaren’s MP4-29 simply suits the layout of Sochi’s new circuit after the team surprisingly hit the ground running at the Russian GP.
In what arguably represented McLaren’s most convincingly competitive start to a grand prix weekend in two seasons, both Button and Kevin Magnussen ran in the top six on the timesheet throughout Friday with the Dane only outpaced by Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton in the later session.
McLaren were particularly competitive relative to the two W05s on the harder prime tyre with the Woking outfit’s drivers trading fastest times with the runaway championship leaders during P2 before Hamilton made a big step forward on the soft compound.
Button, who lost ground on the qualifying simulations and wound up four places behind Magnussen in sixth, was delighted with the speed of the MP4-29 on the opening day.
“It’s been good all day. One of us has put a good lap in all day long,” the 34-year-old told Sky Sports News HQ. “For me the prime tyre’s been working better, option on long runs is also very good, but I set the car up around the primes so when I put the option on it wasn’t working.
“But we can find the pace, which is exciting. We’re a lot more in the mix than previous races, swapping times with the Mercedes’ on primes was quite interesting, not so much on option.”
Given Friday’s practice sessions represented the first time that all teams had tackled the Sochi circuit in real life, one suggestion debated during Sky F1’s live coverage from Russia was that McLaren’s particularly advanced simulator technology may have helped give them an early set-up edge.
But when that theory was put to him, Button replied: “The car just suits the circuit. We have changed the set-up.
“Suzuka we made some good steps forward with set-up and we carried some forward to here. It seems to work for us, surprisingly, a little bit unexpected, but it seems to work for us quite well here.”
Button, who finished fifth in the rain last weekend at Suzuka, conceded other teams were likely to come to the fore as the track’s grip levels ramped up into the weekend, but expressed hope that McLaren could hold their Friday ground.
“Tomorrow it’s going to grip up and see if it suits us then,” he admitted. “I think it will probably come to a few more cars and not so us, but we’ve got some work to do and some ways of improving the car.”
McLaren are currently locked in a tight battle with Force India for fifth place in the Constructors’ Championship, Button’s team closing back to within one point of their rivals in Japan.
Get Jenson Button's thoughts on an even wider range of topics - including his fantasy F1 team-mate, what he will do when he retires and the things he finds most frustrating about the sport - in our exclusive readers' Q&A with the 2009 World Champion.
