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Button expects McLaren response

Jenson Button struggled to make a three-stop strategy work in Turkey © Sutton Images

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Jenson Button says he is confident that McLaren will be back on the pace in Spain following an uncompetitive weekend in Turkey.

Button qualified sixth in Istanbul behind Nico Rosberg and Fernando Alonso as well as both Red Bull's and his team-mate Lewis Hamilton, before running on a three-stop strategy as opposed to the optimum four stops used by most drivers. The result was a sixth placed finish, a minute behind race winner Sebastian Vettel, and Button said it had been frustrating to not make the strategy work.

"It's disappointing because, from the cockpit, I didn't really do anything wrong," Button said. "I drove a clean, strong race and looked after the tyres, but I suffered a bit as a result of that. As we've seen in the first three races, all the teams and drivers are on a steep learning curve with these tyres and we just have to notch this one down to experience and move on. I think we'll all learn something from Sunday and, hopefully, we can put it to good use as soon as possible."

Button admitted that the car had not been quick enough in Turkey, which had forced McLaren to put him on a different strategy, but that he was expecting to be more competitive in Barcelona and Monaco.

"Besides, we didn't really have the pace in the car to challenge for victory on Sunday. When you have the car beneath you that has good pace, it does make your strategy easier: when you're forced to push, you sometimes have to make a marginal call, or try to make a less-than-perfect strategy work. We never said it was easy, and it's good that we feel confident enough to make risky calls. I'll be heading into the next two races feeling more confident that we'll be back to our usual position up at the front."

He highlighted a lack of available upgrades on the MP4-26 as the main reason why McLaren lost ground to Red Bull, but said that gains would be made once they were added to the car.

"For Turkey, we'd planned to introduce a couple of useful upgrades, but for several reasons, we weren't able to get them onto the car. As we've said before, the championship battle is basically a development race, and we stumbled a little bit in Turkey because the progress that we'd anticipated making wasn't quite there.

But I know how this team reacts. They won't have liked having fallen off the bubble in Turkey, and we feel pretty confident that we'll be able to get the pace and reliability from some of our planned upgrades, so I'm optimistic that we'll have those components back on the car for Barcelona. We're always developing new solutions, too, and I know that the designers are pushing hard on all fronts to make sure we're in a position to win more races."

© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.