Jenson Button is predicting an unpredictable grid for next weekend’s Melbourne season opener.<\/p>\n
As the final four-day test of the winter pre-season begins on Thursday in Barcelona, the McLaren-Honda driver said the pecking order has changed since last year.<\/p>\n
“A year ago,” the Briton is quoted by Speed Week, “it was clear that Mercedes and Williams were ahead of the competition.<\/p>\n
“But this time it’s really hard for me to see the pecking order.\u00a0 We could have a pretty mixed up field in Australia,” Button, 35, added.<\/p>\n
Indeed, a mix of teams have often seemed competitive at recent tests, including the obviously improved Ferrari, the fastest-in-Barcelona Lotus, and the usual suspects Mercedes, Williams and Red Bull.<\/p>\n
“It is really difficult to see who’s fast and who still has work to do,” Button agreed.<\/p>\n
“I think Mercedes is at the front.\u00a0 But when you look at the long runs, Ferrari looks strong.\u00a0 Williams, it’s hard to tell, and Red Bull and Sauber are looking solid.”<\/p>\n
As for his own McLaren-Honda camp, it has been a difficult and tumultuous period as the great names reunite for the complex challenge of the new V6 era.<\/p>\n
“I’ve been through a few difficult winters,” Button said.\u00a0 “Here (at McLaren) in 2010, the exhaust kept falling apart.<\/p>\n
“In most cases, you get your problems under control.\u00a0 I am convinced that we will see significant progress from some teams this year, and that makes it all pretty exciting.”<\/p>\n
\u00a9 RIF | GMM<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Jenson Button is predicting an unpredictable grid for next weekend’s Melbourne season opener. As the final four-day test of the winter pre-season begins on Thursday in Barcelona, the McLaren-Honda driver said the pecking order has changed since last year. “A year ago,” the Briton is quoted by Speed Week, “it was clear that Mercedes and …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23073,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[3],"tags":[5262,5340,153,4374],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26880"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26880"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26880\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26881,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26880\/revisions\/26881"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23073"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}