• Canadian Grand Prix

McLaren experimenting to help Button

Jenson Button was only able to complete 12 laps in FP1 due to an oil leak © Sutton Images

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• Race:
• Canadian Grand Prix

• Drivers:
• Jenson Button

• Teams:
• McLaren

McLaren technical director Paddy Lowe says the team is experimenting with different setups to try and solve Jenson Button's current problems.

Having won the first race and been second in China, Button has since undergone a major dip in form. Just two points from the last three races has seen him slip 31 points off the championship lead, with his cause not helped by a failure to make Q3 in the last two races. Lowe said in Montreal that McLaren is still not sure how to rectify the problems but that it is making progress.

"[We're doing] mostly experiments on setup," Lowe said. "We've learnt quite a bit from what we had in Monaco and what didn't work and where the weaknesses were there. So we're taking forward quite a few ideas that we've tried out in the simulator and we're trying those here. Obviously that didn't go well this morning with losing the track time so we'll see what more we can do this afternoon on that.

"But it is a concern that we've seen two or three races - Spain was interesting. Jenson was very strong on the Friday and Lewis [Hamilton] less so, and then by the time it got to Saturday it was the complete opposite. So I don't believe it's a problem with Jenson whatsoever, it's just something to do with how we set the car up for him and how he then exploits it."

Lowe admitted that the team was looking at what it may be doing differently since China in an attempt to solve the problems.

"That's engineering; you try to look for patterns and we're doing a lot of that at the moment. But it does seem like this is a multi-dimensional problem really. It's not as simple as just saying, the tyres aren't hot enough or the tyres are too hot - it's not that simple."

© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.