Date Monday February 2 2015
Driver Jenson Button
Location Circuito de Jerez (4.428km)
Laps/km 6/26.6km
Best lap-time 1m54.655s
Programme Today was another day of limited running for the team. Despite a concerted effort overnight to rectify the issues that had limited progress yesterday, our first run this morning once again brought a problem to the surface.
The engineers duly attempted to fix matters throughout the morning, carrying out a number of installation runs, but were not able to arrive at a definitive cure. Before the lunch break, therefore, they elected to investigate the situation even more deeply, thereby uncovering a small ancillary issue that they believed to be the root cause of the trouble.
The fix took most of the afternoon to effect, resulting in Jenson’s running just a single additional lap at the end of the day, which we believe indeed proved to have cured the issue.
We are therefore hopeful of beginning afresh tomorrow, without a recurrence of the issue.
Jenson Button
“We expected this test to be tricky - and the next two days probably won’t be plain sailing, either. But people have short memories . Look at last winter - the first test of 2014 was very tough for everyone too.
“So there are no real worries at the moment. We’re just hopeful we’ve solved our issue – the last run of the day seems to have sorted the problem out, so I hope tomorrow will be a little easier. It’d be nice to get some laps on the engine, and to begin to find out where we are in terms of engine driveability and car development.
“This is a very complicated power unit, but its packaging is unbelievable - very tight - and we haven’t had any temperature issues. That’s a massive positive for us, so well done to Honda for that.
“There’s a very positive atmosphere about the place: the team isn’t McLaren and Honda, it’s McLaren-Honda. It’s everyone together.”
Yasuhisa Arai
Honda R&D senior managing officer – chief officer of motorsport
“Today was another tricky day, but we feel like we’ve overcome the main issue that affected our running during the first two days of the test.
“Despite our lack of mileage, it’s been a important learning process for our engineers, who’ve really started to develop a close working relationship with everybody at McLaren - that’s a big positive.
“For tomorrow, we’re hopeful that we’ve moved on, and that we can get some more laps completed.”
Today’s unofficial testing times
1 Sebastian Vettel Ferrari 1m20.984s 88 laps
2 Felipe Nasr Sauber 1m21.867s 88 laps
3 Valtteri Bottas Williams 1m22.319s 61 laps
4 Lewis Hamilton Mercedes 1m22.490s 90 laps
5 Max Verstappen Toro Rosso 1m24.167s 73 laps
6 Pastor Maldonado Lotus 1m25.802s 41 laps
7 Jenson Button McLaren-Honda 1m54.655s 6 laps
8 Daniil Kvyat Red Bull - 18 laps
What’s next Fernando returns to the cockpit for his second and final day of the test.
