Dubai: McLaren-Mercedes team driver Jenson Button is extremely enthusiastic about his chances of improvement at the 2012 Formula 1 Etihad Airways Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.
Button, who tussled with team mate Lewis Hamilton and Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso before ending fifth in last week’s Indian Grand Prix, was hopeful his car could come up with a much improved performance at the Yas Marina Circuit here this weekend.
“I made my pit stop earlier than anticipated so that we could find a better balance on the harder tyre, but that didn’t work out because I got stuck behind Romain [Grosjean] and that lost me more time,” Button said at the post-race conference after the Indian Grand Prix on Sunday.
“But getting fastest lap on the final lap was great, and I think there’s plenty of potential that we can build on and take with us to Abu Dhabi,” the British driver added.
Button, who was in action at the Dubai Autodrome yesterday morning for a jog at the circuit along with personal trainer Mike Collier and former race driver Richard Williams, has landed early in the UAE so that he can acclimatise to the weather here.
The Englishman, who so far has two Grand Prix wins so far this season, explained: “It’s good to do training in hot conditions, which is perfect for this weekend’s race in Abu Dhabi. It’s also good for my weight. It keeps it down. If I run I lose so much weight, which I need because you’re limited on weight when you are a tall driver.”
Button was off to a flying start to the 2012 season after winning the Australian Grand Prix but a series of bad finishes, thanks to tyre and set-up woes, found the driver struggle to get serious points before a brief mid-season revival.
Martin Whitmarsh, the McLaren team principal, had enough reason to be happy with the performance of his two cars over last weekend. “We scored 22 world championship points in India, but we’d hoped to score quite a few more than that. We found it difficult to coax sufficient pace out of the options, but our car was the fastest in the field on the primes. The trouble was, by the time we were running on primes, the gap to the cars ahead was a bit too large,” Whitmarsh conceded.
“If the race had been just a few laps longer, I’m certain he’d have fancied his [Hamilton] chances of getting past Mark [Weber].
Whitmarsh was full of praise for the way in which Button handled the car. “Jenson drove superbly in difficult conditions, losing quite a bit of time while stuck behind Romain [Grosjean]. But he made as rapid progress as Lewis did once he’d got onto primes,” the official acknowledged.
In fact, Button drove the fastest lap of the race on the very last lap and this was McLaren’s 150th fastest lap in world championship grand prix racing. In the bargain McLaren Mercedes tied Ferrari’s all-time record of 55 consecutive world championship Grands Prix in the points in a run that started in Australia in 2010. McLaren Mercedes has scored points in every single grand prix since Button joined the team.
“In Abu Dhabi, we’ll be seeking to establish a new benchmark: 56 consecutive world championship Grands Prix in the points. In fact, of course, we’ll be aiming to do a bit more than that: there are three Grands Prix still to run this season, and you can be well sure that everyone at Vodafone McLaren Mercedes will be doing his or her level best to win as many of them as we possibly can,” Whitmarsh promised.
