Button warns of tougher race for McLaren

After a difficult start to the campaign, Button scored McLaren's first points of the season with an eighth placed finish on the streets of Monte Carlo.

But despite Honda having dipped in to its engine development token allocation to deliver improvements for this weekend's race in Montreal, Button says that Canada's power demands will make things hard for his team.

When asked what he was expecting, Button said: “A slightly tougher weekend than Monaco. Canada is a great circuit and there’s always a lot of action here, it’s not a predictable race whatsoever.

“Last year I started the second-to-last lap eighth and finished fourth. I overtook two cars at the hairpin and two cars crashed at Turn 1 on the final lap, so anything can happen and it normally does.

“Who knows what the weekend is going to throw at us? I think we’ve just got to get stuck in, get on with our plan and see where we are.

“Obviously there are long straights here. I think we’ve made some positive improvements, whether it’s enough or not we’ll have to wait and see.”

Balancing reliability and speed

As well as hoping to deliver a step forward in performance, Button says that McLaren also needs to ensure that it makes progress with its reliability too.

Fernando Alonso has had points-scoring opportunities slip through his fingers in recent races thanks to retirements in Spain and Monaco.

Button said there was a fine line between pushing on with speed and making sure that it did not impact on the ability to get to the chequered flag.

“With the issues we’ve had in races, my issues in Bahrain and Fernando’s the last two races, we all want performance,” he said. “But you’ve got to be able to get to the end of the race as well.

“It’s a difficult balancing act, because we all want to move forward and every race we’re asked questions about ‘Where are you going to end up? How much quicker are you going to be?’

"It’s a tricky one trying to balance it all.”