McLaren’s Fernando Alonso and Jenson Button believe a two-second gain over the winter is entirely possible, putting them in the mix for podium finishes, but not quite race wins according to the latter.
The team scored just 27 points and often languished at the bottom of the timing screens, an average of 2.4 seconds off the pace of the leading Mercedes cars, but just 1.8 seconds off the chasing pack.
Therefore a two-second gain would put them amongst the chasing pack, however with improvements up and down the grid, it’s likely they will need to find a little more than two-seconds.
“I think that’s possible,” Button told Top Gear when asked if two-seconds sounded plausible. “There are certain things that bring a massive amount of lap time that are sorted for next year already, stuff you can’t simply bolt on during the season. It’s looking very positive.
“I don’t think we’ll surprise people because they expect us to be competitive, and we’re not going to win races, but I think we have a chance of getting podiums and being in the mix.”
Alonso believes McLaren can find more time if everything comes together, and it’s believed he has good reason to think that, with suggestions Honda have made huge progress – or at least have solutions to many of their problems.
“I agree with that [what Button said]. Maybe even more [time] than that,” he added.
“Everyone will improve between half a second and a second. That’s the normal step top teams can do over the winter.
“For us being two seconds off the pace, we need to do much more than that, and the power unit will be the main thing to unlock this potential.”
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