Jenson Button believes McLaren’s lack of pace at times during the season was more damaging to their championship ambitions than their reliability woes.
The team managed to finish third in the constructors’ championship whilst Lewis Hamilton and Button finished fourth and fifth respectively. At times however, the team led both championships as it took advantage of its early domination.
Their car was the pacesetter at various points during the year but a spree of reliability failures and pit errors cost them vital points. Button though says the times when their car wasn’t on the pace was more damaging.
“The most difficult part for us was before the summer break when we just didn’t have the pace,” said the 32-year-old.
“The reason why we were not fighting for the title isn’t just the reliability issues, the pace in that period of time wasn’t good enough compared to our competitors.”
The reliability problems attracted more attention because they happened at important times during the season according to Button.
“We have had reliability issues, but when you actually look at it, the problems have all been at [race] weekends,” he added.
“We did 1400 kilometres at the young driver test and didn’t have one issue at all, so we have been a little bit unlucky, I think.”
