Jenson Button is confident of fighting for victory at his grand prix this weekend, as McLaren will debut a heavily revised rear-end on the MP4-25 seen at the last race in Valencia.
That race ended with both McLaren team-mates making the podium, although the top-spot was dominated by Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel who took an easy win after the chasing Lewis Hamilton was penalised.
Button is hoping the Woking based outfit can get the updates working straight away, which is often a difficult job.
“We have some new parts on the car that should lift us a little bit,” the Brit said. “We know Ferrari are going to be very, very quick and we think Red Bull also, and Mercedes.
“But our package will really lift us into a good position where we can fight for a victory this weekend.
“It [this update] is very important for the rest of our season. They don’t always work when you put them on the car as we’ve seen with a couple of the teams in Valencia; you need to work with it. Hopefully we’ll get it all right before this weekend – that has to be our aim. You can’t hope that it’ll just be ok at the next race because you can’t give a race away this year.”
The 30-year-old, currently lying second in the championship behind his team-mate, expects a busy weekend fine-tuning the updates.
“It goes to the wind tunnel, it goes to the simulator and it’s tested many times before it gets on to the circuit. There is always fine tuning you need to do over a race weekend, so we’re going to have a busy Friday and Saturday I think.”
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