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Button praises 'competitive' Sauber

ESPNF1 Staff
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Jenson Button: "It's good to see some smaller teams are competitive, we just hope they're not too competitive" © Sutton Images
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Jenson Button believes Sauber will be "competitive" at the season-opening Australian Grand Prix after noting impressive testing pace.

Sergio Perez topped the timesheets on Saturday when Button was in the McLaren for the last time, setting a fastest lap of 1:22.090 on soft tyres. Button said that a similar time from Perez's team-mate Kamui Kobayashi had alerted him to Sauber's pace, and admitted he hoped it wouldn't be able to mix it at the front of the grid in Melbourne.

"I think if you look at the times I think there are a few people that stand out who are very impressive," Button said. "One is Perez because he did his time on softs; I think most people did it on supersofts. We noticed that in the last test as well with Kobayashi, he did a 1m22.3s on softs - it's a very impressive time.

"They've done a great job and they've got reliability. So it's good to see some smaller teams are competitive, we just hope they're not too competitive."

Button added that he still thought Red Bull has pace to show despite not challenging for the headline laptimes during the final test.

"I think the Red Bull - my opinion is that they're running quite a bit of fuel. I think they've made improvements as well. As always Red Bull don't want to show their hand so I think they're running quite a lot of fuel on board which we don't know how much, it's all a guess so it's better just to concentrate on what we're doing."

© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.
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