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Button hails 'unbelievable' progress

Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button enjoyed a much-improved McLaren in Australia © Sutton Images

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Jenson Button has described the progress made by McLaren at the start of the season as "unbelievable".

Following a poor pre-season, the team's new MP4-26 appeared to be well off the pace, but upgrades brought to the Australian Grand Prix worked immediately and saw Lewis Hamilton finish second, while Button was sixth following a drive-through penalty. Button himself admitted that he expected to be fighting towards the back of the midfield before the new exhaust system was introduced.

"Over two weeks ago we thought we were probably on the pace of the Force India cars in testing," Button told the Daily Mail. "But we qualified two seconds quicker than them. We have picked up so much pace, it is unbelievable. Looking at the performance of the car now and seeing where we have come from, it's massively impressive. I've never seen anything like it."

Button also said that the updates had yet to show their full potential, having been fast-tracked on to the cars in time for the season-opening race in Melbourne. The 2009 world champion was looking forward to the future development that McLaren could make, and predicted further improvements for the next race in Malaysia.

"You can see in the team everyone is now really positive," he said. "And there is a good atmosphere because we know this is only the beginning for us. With this new exhaust system, it's the starting point, and whereas everyone else has had all winter to play around with theirs, we can make some improvements. So ahead of the next race in Malaysia, with the way the exhaust worked in Australia, that is a circuit that should suit our car."

Team principal Martin Whitmarsh was also confident for Malaysia, as the car will feature an improved, lighter diffuser. He said that in order to get the new parts ready for Australia, McLaren had to compromise on the materials used.

"We had to manufacture the parts for the new exhaust in a very short time," Whitmarsh told Auto Motor und Sport."So we had to build the diffuser entirely of titanium which, of course, cost us some extra weight."

© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.