McLaren sporting director Sam Michael dismisses talks of Jenson Button sensitivity – Formula 1
McLaren sporting director Sam Michael has dismissed talks of Jenson Button being more sensitive to the Pirelli compounds than his team-mate Lewis Hamilton.
Button won the inaugurating race of the season in Australia but since has struggled to repeat that performance. Recently he has been driving well below his potential and after much pondering the Brit has said that he has not been able to comprehend the Pirelli
compounds.
Button has only managed to score two points in the last four races while his team-mate Hamilton has scored 43 points in as many races. Hamilton lapped Button during the Canadian GP.
Michael said that Button does not require a more precise set-up that Lewis. Both drivers are driving very similar set ups. There are little tweaks that each driver makes for their cars because of slightly different styles which is normal but that does not
mean that Button is in any way more sensitive to the car that Lewis is.
Michael defended Button by saying that the team has made a few errors in Button’s approach but learning from the performances he is bound to come up with an improved performance.
He said, “With Jenson in Canada, if you go back to the start of the weekend we had quite a few problems with his gearbox on Friday and he lost a lot of track time because of that. From that point on, we tried a few different things with his car set-up to
try to explore different areas, and in hindsight we probably shouldn't have done that. The wear profile on his tyres was extremely different to what Lewis had and there are certain reasons for that which we believe we've understood and can easily put right
for Valencia.”
Button will be hoping to do better at Valencia, another street circuit. Overtaking will be a hard ordeal at the venue that is why qualifying is going to be very important for a better result on race day.
It will be interesting to see how Button performs at Valencia and how he deals with the pressure of coming good after a few bad results.
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