• British Grand Prix

Button confident despite playing down McLaren upgrade

Jenson Button: "Even without the bits on the car I think we should have a pretty good car round here" © Sutton Images

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• News:
• McLaren confident it can beat Red Bull at Silverstone
  

• Race:
• British Grand Prix

• Drivers:
• Jenson Button

• Teams:
• McLaren

Jenson Button has played down the size of McLaren's upgrade for the British Grand Prix this weekend, but does think his car will be on the pace at Silverstone.

After Red Bull brought an update to the European Grand Prix that put the RB8 a step above the rest at Valencia, McLaren is expected to hit back at its home race with aerodynamic and suspension updates. On Wednesday, McLaren's sporting director Sam Michael said he was expecting more from this upgrade than the usual tenth of a second his team aims for at each race, but added that the car would also benefit from being on a circuit more suited to its strengths.

Button agrees that the car will be well suited to Silverstone, but played down the performance gain from the new updates.

"We're going to see a step, but I don't think we're going to see a massive step," he said. "With the regulations being so limited in terms of what you can do aerodynamically, it's difficult to find a massive step like you could last year with the diffuser. But we do have a few bits aerodynamically, and mechanically there's some stuff that is very exciting. We have bits that should help us around here.

"But even without the bits on the car I think we should have a pretty good car round here. Looking at the last race [Valencia], I think a lot of people were quite excited about how quick the Red Bull was, and their pace was phenomenal with a big aerodynamic package that works in low-speed corners. That's an area where it is very difficult to get the car working aerodynamically because we're so limited with blowing the rear diffuser. But they've worked out a way of doing it and I think at low speed they had very good downforce and that is an area where we are lacking at the moment. That shouldn't matter for us here because it's a high-speed circuit where the downforce should work for us."

Button has struggled for pace at recent races but appeared to find an improvement in Valencia after reverting to a previous setup.

"We went back to the setup we had three races before. In Canada we had different rear suspension and very different rear end in terms of the idea, and with engine braking as well. It was just to go in a new direction because we felt we were damaging the rear tyres too much. But because we didn't have any testing on the Friday, the first real test was in the race and instead of helping the rear degradation it made it a lot worse and we grained the tyres in about three laps.

"It was the wrong thing and normally we would have found that out on the Friday. It's been little things like that that have been really frustrating in the last few races. Maybe I haven't done a good enough job in terms of setting the car up, but every time we have tried something new we've had an issue. It's been many different things that have been tough for us over the last few races and that's why the performance isn't good enough."

But Button, who is 62 points off championship leader Fernando Alonso in the drivers' standings, is adamant his title hopes are still well and truly alive.

"It is 60 points, which is quite a few points, but we've seen how quickly it can turn around. No, it's definitely not over. If there was one person streaking away in the lead like Seb [last year] then it would be quite a big chunk to get back, but if we win this race and the Ferraris are not on the pace then it could be a lot of points in the bag."

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