Despite a race to forget, McLaren remains confident for Bahrain
Beyond Fernando Alonso's spectacular crash, Jenson Button did not salvage anything for the Woking team with this fifteenth place at the end of the Grand Prix. Ron Dennis and his men still have a lot of work to do... but optimism remains.
The progress of McLaren-Honda announced this winter was not evident during the Australian Grand Prix. Starting twelfth, Jenson Button finished the race in fourteenth place, overtaken in particular by the two Renaults he had dominated in qualifying. The race strategy seemed to have failed the 2009 World Champion: “My car wasn’t too bad today, but I think we lacked foresight in our strategy. Also, the red flag penalized us because we had already made our first stop. Then, on the restart, we fitted the super-soft tires, like most drivers at my level in the standings. As a result, I could quickly overtake but was also more easily at the mercy of others. My tire degradation was significant, and I had to pit for another stop, so I found myself at the back of the pack.”
The British veteran also reflected on his teammate’s terrible incident: “I’m really glad that Fernando got out of his car on his own after such an accident. I’m sure he’ll remember it for a few weeks.”
“It is astonishing to see how these cars are catapulted when they hit tires, it can happen extremely fast. But the fact that the survival cell functioned shows how much our sport is progressing in terms of safety,” he continued.
Eric Boullier, for his part, admitted that Jenson Button’s race, ironically, was compromised by his teammate’s accident. “This accident compromised his race strategy, preventing him from scoring points. But tire degradation was also a problem this afternoon.”
The Frenchman, McLaren’s race director, nevertheless believes that McLaren’s season will really begin at the next Grand Prix: “Despite the fact that we didn’t score points today, we are confident in the progress we made this winter. We will be in a position to score points in the upcoming races.”
Finally, as a great sage, Fernando Alonso reminded everyone of the risks of the profession after his high-speed crash, which remained the standout event for the team that day: *”We risk our lives every time we get into a Formula 1 car.”*
