McLaren Barcelona test II - Day 3 report

Today was Jenson’s last day in the car before Melbourne and, appropriately, he spent it evaluating the new race package we intend to race in Australia later this month.

Jenson Button, McLaren Mercedes

Photo by: xpb.cc

The morning was spent successfully installing and understanding the suite of new aero components, but this was interrupted by a hydraulics issue which kept the car in the garage until after the lunch break.

The day was further disturbed by a mid-afternoon rainshower – so today’s proposed set-up, tyre-comparison work and a long run were postponed, and will be conducted by Lewis tomorrow.

Jenson Button

“When you get new parts, you want to go out and put lots of laps on it in order to compare it to what you had previously – but we weren’t able to do that today. We had a hydraulics issue in the morning, which meant we didn’t do much running.

“So it wasn’t the easiest morning – and then we didn’t do much running in the afternoon either because of the rain. We put a couple of good laps in but didn’t get any set-up work done – because of the rain.

“It was nice to drive the new package, and I have a good feeling about it, but I need to work with it for a bit longer to find the right balance for it.

“Hopefully, Lewis will put some more laps on the car tomorrow.”