Friday: McLaren drivers want to have a “smart” race
After a busy schedule for both McLaren drivers, Jenson Button seems confident for the rest of the weekend while Sergio Perez hopes for a smart new strategy from his team to aim for points on Sunday and silence the critics.
Jenson Button – 6th and 11th: Today’s tests were very productive for us. We completed several useful studies this morning before focusing on long stints this afternoon.
It was very difficult for us to know exactly what to do with our settings. It is a circuit that requires a lot of traction with quite a bit of low-speed sections but also some high-speed corners, and that puts a lot of load on the rear tires.
The tires behave a bit strangely here – conservative driving doesn’t seem to increase their lifespan, so there’s not much you can do to prevent it from affecting your pace.
But we tried different things, and we will get there. I already feel that we have found settings and a direction that will allow us to be even more competitive tomorrow. There are many lessons we can take from today that will help us tomorrow.
Sergio Perez – 11th and 13th: « We managed to complete our programs this morning and this afternoon, which is positive, but it’s going to be a tough weekend for us.
Even if we will probably fight to make it into Q3, there is still a lot of potential to have a good race on Sunday. The team has shown before that with solid preparation, we can develop a smart strategy for Sunday, and I think we’ve gathered enough data today to help us to have a strong race this weekend. So, scoring points is a realistic goal for us in Bahrain.
