McLaren F1: Bad day for Button, improvement for Alonso
The day of Friday was very contrasting for the McLaren-Honda drivers: while Jenson Button experienced many reliability issues, Fernando Alonso, 7th and 12th, achieved the best sessions for the team this season.
Reliability is still lacking at McLaren-Honda. Jenson Button was hindered this Friday by electrical issues on his car and could only do two laps in the first session and only 15 in the second: « I think it wasn’t a great day, but at least we gathered some useful data on the car. Hopefully, we won’t experience similar problems. (…) But whatever happens, it won’t be an easy weekend. We already knew that. And qualifying will certainly be perilous once again! ».
Fernando Alonso, on the other hand, enjoyed a much calmer day. The Spaniard even settled into the top 10 during the first session, held in the daytime heat of the desert, thanks to a time that was admittedly not very representative of future qualifying conditions. “Today, we had a trouble-free day, and I was happy with the car in all conditions. (…) We can see that we continue to catch up with the pack at each race. We are definitely moving in the right direction, we just need to go a bit faster! But we don’t have a magic button here.”
The McLaren-Hondas will have the difficult mission of making it past Q1 this Saturday in Sakhir. It would be a first this season.
