Jenson Button is confident his MP4-25 will be better suited to the Japanese circuit, a race he calls his second home grand prix.
The McLaren driver will spend a day at the Woking based factory to get in some last minute practice on the simulator before jetting off to Paris with his girlfriend, Jessica Michibata, for the fashion week.
“I’m going to England for a day to spend some time in the simulator at the factory, and the missus has also been invited to Paris for a fashion week, so I’m going to go there for a day,” he told the Press Association, “I’ll arrive in Japan on Friday, and I’m hoping we’ll have some good support from the Japanese fans. With Jessica being Japanese, I’m sure there’ll be a lot of her supporters there as well.”
A double upgrade package will debut on the car after the planned Singapore package didn’t make it to the race due to ‘reliability’ issues, something Button hopes will give the team a big boost.
“We’ve got a good upgrade for Suzuka – we’ll have something that we tried to put on the car [at Singapore] but couldn’t for reliability reasons. Coupled with our planned-for-Suzuka upgrade, it should hopefully be a bit of a double-whammy,” he confirmed.
Button slipped into fifth place in the standings last weekend after finishing behind all but one of his main championship rivals, his team-mate Lewis Hamilton whom retired after a coming together with title leader Mark Webber.
Though Button isn’t too disheartened as the gap remains at a relatively small 25 points points, just a race win under the new points system introduced for 2010.
“My championship hopes were dented a little bit by Mark finishing ahead of me, but the points gap to the front is just a race victory away,” he added.
“It shows there’s still everything to play for – one bad race can cost you a lot of points. – but I know we’ll be going to Suzuka with a much better package, and to a circuit that will suit our car more.”
