Sunday: Many Promises, Few Results for McLaren F1

Jenson Button (n°22) – 8th

Jenson Button was the first driver able to choose his tires as he started 11th on the grid. He took full advantage of it, being already 6th in the early laps. But then things turned sour: « Things were going well. But I think we made a mistake with the strategy during our second stop. I don’t know why we stopped so early. It made it extremely difficult for me to conserve my tires until the end, which was the plan. The strategy didn’t work for us, which is really unfortunate, but we will learn valuable lessons from it. »

He then returned to the incident with his former teammate, Lewis Hamilton: « I was surprised when I was hit by Lewis. Many drivers take turn 6 from the outside to get a better exit. Maybe Lewis expected me to let him through, but why would I have let someone pass? We were racing. »

Kevin Magnussen (n°20) – 9th

The Dane’s race was obviously largely compromised by the first corner accident: « I think we could have had a decent race without the first corner accident. I need to review the slow-motion footage, but I feel that if I had more space, I wouldn’t have hit Felipe. I did my best to avoid him, but there wasn’t much more I could do. »

Afterward, we had to fight until the end to bring back two points in the end: I spun out and had to stop in the pits. I then spent the first half of the race working my way back up through the field. It’s clearly not the best thing that could have happened.

On the other hand, he was pleasantly surprised by the performance of his tires: « There is still some positive to take from the day: the car performed extremely well. The rear tires held up well, which is new for this car. Usually, it’s a bigger problem to keep them alive, but today it went well. I’m happy to bring back points but I’m disappointed because we would have wanted to score more points. »