Jerez Day 2: Button tops for McLaren

Jenson Button gave the McLaren-Mercedes MP4-29 its track debut in grand style by going quickest on day two at Jerez.

The British driver completed 43 laps to edge out day one pace setter Kimi Raikkonen by just over six tenths, while Williams' Valtteri Bottas, Nico Rosberg and Sergio Perez gave Mercedes-powered cars four of the top five positions.

Results

Quotes

Nico Rosberg
That was a great team effort today. We had to fix a problem on our car overnight. The guys worked through the night back at the factories and flew in the parts just in time this morning, so we were able to do a lot of mileage today which is great for our learning process. It was a great feeling to put some good miles on the new Silver Arrow and there's a lot of new stuff to clear because it's very different to the old car. It's heavier, you have less downforce and the steering wheel is completely different; it's almost like a smartphone with all the information on it! Every lap is important to get used to the new systems and it helped a lot that I have worked on this already in the simulator. We don't know yet where we are compared to the other teams, but we can be quite happy after the first two days of testing here in Spain. Now I look forward to getting back in the car on Friday.

Paddy Lowe
The team worked very hard overnight, both at the circuit and in the UK, to recover from yesterday's wing failure. We had a slow start to the day, waiting for components to arrive from base, but we are happy with the solution that we found. The car left the garage just before midday and after resolving some minor issues, we began our planned program at 1300. Our objective was to put mileage on the car and we achieved a total of 97 laps without any major issues, which is a great credit to the teams at both factories and those trackside here at Jerez. We have a lot of data to analyze overnight and look forward to continuing our learning tomorrow.

Sergio Perez: "
Today was a lot more productive than yesterday so in that respect we are making progress as we learn about the car. We still have a long way to go with understanding the complexity of all the systems so it’s important that the next two days with Nico and Daniel give us the information we need before we arrive in Bahrain. It will be only then that we can hopefully start to work on performance."

Esteban Gutierrez:
“Today we were able to do a lot of laps, which is very positive. Considering the circumstances, it is very important to put in this mileage. We found some issues in the systems, which is something to work on and part of the process. Obviously at this stage I was not able to push. Before we can take it to the limit our priority is reliability. We had some issues with the braking system, where it was better to go easy in the braking zones, figure out how the system reacts, get mileage and sort it out."

Valtteri Bottas:
Testing this week is about checking all the new systems more than outright performance so problems are expected, but we've been solving each one as it has come up. We completed some running in the wet this morning to gather some data on the intermediate tires and then clocked up some more laps in the dry this afternoon and my first impression of the car is positive. Unfortunately we had to finish the day slightly early though. I felt something different with the rear of the car so the team called me straight back in to check it over. We are much wiser than we were yesterday and have a better understanding of the car already and so I'm looking forward to the next time I can get behind the wheel.