Notable progress for McLaren in China

After two disastrous opening Grand Prix marked by unenviable performances and rather expected retirements, McLaren seems to be keeping its head above water at the start of this weekend at the Shanghai circuit.

Jenson Button even achieves the 10th fastest time in the second practice session, followed by Fernando Alonso two places further down. A performance that leaves the Briton perplexed, however: « We seem to be quite comfortable here, but this may be explained by the fact that we seem to have been able to extract the maximum from our car today, which may not have been the case for the other teams. The car feels quite nice to drive, especially on soft tires. But our single-lap performances seem much better than those on long runs, which is the opposite of what we experienced in Malaysia. But I think we can make progress in this area as early as tomorrow. »

The 2009 world champion ends on a humorous note that shows the good atmosphere within the team: « We made progress today. Hashtag: progress! » he smiles.

His teammate, Fernando Alonso, also remains very pragmatic, even though he’s pleased to see his car making progress: « Obviously, we started the season so far behind compared to the others that it’s easier for us to make faster progress. But it’s been a good day today, in the middle of the pack, though we still need to keep our feet on the ground. We noticed during the first two races that we slipped back a bit in qualifying, so we’ll see what happens tomorrow. »

In today’s performances, Eric Boullier sees an encouraging sign for the future while Honda, through the voice of its sporting director Yasuhisa Arai, admits to having made progress in reliability, allowing them to focus on the energy recovery systems of the Japanese power unit.