Jenson Button is happy with the progress he has made for McLaren-Honda on the opening day of practice for the Hungarian Grand Prix.
The Briton set a fastest lap time of 1:23.961 in Free Practice 1 to finish the session in eighth, only 0.026 seconds behind team-mate Fernando Alonso. Button continued this strong pace into Free Practice 2 after he set a fastest lap time of 1:22.387 to finish again in eighth.
After achieving these good results at the Hungaroring, Button believes the goal now is to qualify as well as they can, allowing them to have the best position possible to fight and hopefully score some good world championship points.
“I’m pretty happy with the way the car feels, on both long runs and low-fuel runs,” said Button. “Having said that, tyre degradation is definitely going to be important here on Sunday: it seems the Soft tyre has very good degradation, but the Supersoft is struggling just a bit.
“As always, the Hungaroring circuit is great fun to drive – and it’s giving us a good feeling as well, especially now that the track surface is gripping up. As for the asphalt itself, I like the new smoother surface – and it seems to be working for us, too.
“It’s pretty tight in the midfield – we ended up seventh and eighth both this morning and this afternoon, and everyone behind us was very close – so the closest fight is definitely behind us, not in front of us. Our goal is to qualify as well as we can, then score some good world championship points. I think we should be able to do that – that’s our aim certainly.”
