Sunday: Jenson Button, who conserves his McLaren, sees the points
Aware of the limitations of its car, McLaren opted for a two-stop strategy, requiring its drivers to display a lot of composure and discipline to achieve the expected results. While Jenson Button brilliantly managed to preserve his tires, Sergio Pérez struggled much more and fell short of the points.
Jenson Button – 5th:
« I am very happy to have finished in fifth place today, and the team should be too. The race was going to be complicated no matter what: we weren’t fast enough to adopt the same strategy as the others, so we had to stay on track longer than the others and make two stops instead of three.
For us, two stops was the fastest way to finish the race. It meant letting the others overtake me and preserving the tires. If we couldn’t meet our time target, we would have ruined our race. So I had to control the race where I should have been fighting with my rivals. It’s not the most exciting way to race, but we got ten points because of it. We know we still have a lot of work to do to compete at the front, but we can take away many positives from this weekend.
Sergio Perez – 11th:
« It was a difficult afternoon for me. There are a lot of things to analyze and learn for us. It wasn’t my best weekend in terms of pace, so there is work to be done. Congratulations to Jenson who had a fantastic race today. He found his rhythm better and really made his strategy work. I couldn’t find my rhythm throughout the race and struggled with the car. I had a pretty good first stint and thought we could get a good result with the strategy, but then I encountered degradation with the tires and it compromised our performance.
We still don’t have the speed in the car, but it’s still a weekend rich in lessons for the whole team. We earned some interesting points and head into the next race with a clearer idea of what we can do.
