McLaren's Button is second fastest on test day three at Bahrain

For the third day of the test in Bahrain, Jenson took over driving duties from Kevin Magnussen, continuing the general set-up and evaluative work that the Dane had initiated on Wednesday and Thursday.

Jenson completed a mammoth 103 laps today, a tally which included the MP4-29’s first full race-distance, which was completed in the afternoon.

Jenson Button, McLaren F1 Team

Photo by: XPB Images

Jenson said: “Today was a really busy session – my engineers looked exhausted afterwards, and I’ve never seen that before!

“It was good to put some laps on the car without any major issues. We actually did a race distance in the afternoon, and it was nice to do that so early in testing. Still, that session showed us we still have a lot of work to do.

“The thing we really need to focus on is fully understanding fuel-saving, and the communication required between the driver and engineer. I think we’ll get on top of things, though, because we’re traditionally very good at that.

“We’re in a reasonable position: today was positive because we gathered so much information. There’s still a lot of work to do before the first race; we’d like to be faster, but when you look at other test days, you’d say we’re in reasonable shape.”

1 Lewis Hamilton - Mercedes AMG - 1m 34.263s - 67 laps
2 Jenson Button - McLaren Mercedes - 1m 34.976s - 103 laps
3 Felipe Massa - Williams - 1m 37.066s - 60 laps
4 Esteban Gutierrez - Sauber - 1m 37.180s - 96 laps
5 Sergio Perez - Force India - 1m 37.367s - 57 laps
6 Kimi Raikkonen - Ferrari - 1m 37.476s - 44 laps
7 Daniil Kvyat - Scuderia Toro Rosso - 1m 38.974s - 57 laps
8 Pastor Maldonado - Lotus - 1m 39.642s - 26 laps
9 Daniel Ricciardo - Red Bull Racing - 1m 40.781s - 28 laps
10 Marcus Ericsson - Caterham - 1m 42.130s - 98 laps
11 Max Chilton - Marussia - 1m 46.672s - 4 laps
12 Valtteri Bottas - Williams - Not Available - 55 laps

McLaren Mercedes