17/04/2015
NEWS STORY
Jenson Button: "I guess it wasn't a great day, but at least we got a lot of useful data on the car. The slightly frustrating thing, though, is that both cars were set up quite differently today, to get comparative aero info, and we weren't really able to benefit from that on my car.
"Hopefully, we won't have further issues; that way, I can get some decent running tomorrow so as to see what the car is doing. Whatever happens, though, it's not going to be an easy weekend. We knew that already. And qualifying will undoubtedly be tricky again!"
Fernando Alonso: "Today I had a very smooth day, and I was happy with the car in every condition, so tomorrow we just need to make sure we optimise the performance of the car and try to get a good result.
"Still, today is only Friday, and we saw in Shanghai that we had a decent performance on the Friday but then not so good on the Saturday – due to the fact other people were running more fuel than us on the Friday.
"Even so, we can see that we're getting closer and closer to the mid-pack with every race. Definitely we're moving in the right direction, we just need to do it that bit quicker!
"We don't have any ‘magic bullets' here, since we're only four days after the last race, but we have some little tweaks that are putting some performance in the car. Unfortunately, it wasn't the same for Jenson today, so we're missing some information, but we'll try to recover tomorrow."
Eric Boullier, Racing director: "Today, to quote that hackneyed footballing proverb, was for McLaren-Honda a game of two halves. On the one hand, Fernando enjoyed a trouble-free morning followed by an equally unproblematic afternoon, running through his planned programme without mishap. On the other, Jenson was forced to endure a frustrating day, the result of not one but two major interruptions, compromising his ability to complete satisfactorily not only FP1 but also FP2. We apologise to him for that.
"Even so, we've gathered valuable data, which our engineers will study this evening and tonight.
"It's too early to say where we are, pace-wise, but Fernando's best FP2 lap-time was 1.5s off Nico's [Rosberg] FP2 benchmark. That isn't where we want to be; having said that, I believe it demonstrates that our progress, although not always linear, is nonetheless directionally positive overall."
Yasuhisa Arai, Honda R&D senior managing officer – chief officer of motorsport: "Today, Fernando's FP1 and FP2 running programmes were completed as planned, and we were more or less able to set the driveability control on the power unit.
"As for Jenson's power unit issues, we were limited on running time owing to an electrical shutdown in FP1. We were able to put the car back on the track for FP2, but the control data that monitors the power unit status was unstable and we had to bring the car back to the garage several times, which was unfortunate. We'll need to utilise tomorrow's FP3 to set the control data for qualifying."
Check out our Friday gallery, here.