McLaren: ‘Work to be done before qualifying’

McLaren’s Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton have both admitted there is work to be done in regards to set up if they’re to be in the fight for pole position on Saturday.

Whilst Button finished the session second quickest, he was over three-tenths slower than Sebastian Vettel who led both FP1 and FP2. Button put that down to a lack of balance in the car.

“I don’t feel like I’ve found my flow yet – the track surface wasn’t very grippy in either session because of the morning’s rain,” he said on Friday evening.

“I’m not entirely happy with the balance either – not everything we tried changing today was successful – but we’ve still got a few ideas for tomorrow and that’s a positive.

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“There’s still a lot of work to do – but, if we can fine-tune the balance, we should be competitive.”

Hamilton on the otherhand enjoyed the balance of his car, but believed his long-run pace wasn’t up to scratch despite his engineer disagreeing.

“Our car has quite a nice balance but we still need to make some further set-up changes,” said the 27-year-old. “It’s tough in these temperatures, especially on the long runs, but to be honest I think everyone’s struggling a bit too.

“My race pace didn’t feel great from inside the cockpit, but my engineers tell me it was quite promising. The track should also rubber-in by tomorrow, so tyre degradation should be less of an issue.”

Hamilton, who finished fifth quickest, claims his time loss on his fastest lap came from a mistake at the final corner.

“In FP2, I ran a bit wide at the final corner on my fastest lap and probably lost about half a second. Still, it’s great to be able to throw the car around on a high-downforce circuit.”