MOTORSPORT: Button has faith in Honda

Once the most dominant combination in Formula One history, Honda and the McLaren team reunite as a rank outsider for the season starting within hours.

In light of the way McLaren has handled questions about Fernando Alonso's crash in testing, which has prevented him coming to Melbourne for the Australian Grand Prix, the word rank might indeed be seen as particularly apt.

But to Jenson Button, the vastly-experienced and wily driver in the other McLaren-Honda MP4-30 this year, it's far from doom and gloom after an horrendous pre-season in which the car did less than 1800km in testing – 28 per cent of the distance of reigning world champion team Mercedes – and barely any of them at any serious F1 speeds.

Button, the 2009 world champion, today deputised for Alonso, the 2005-06 champion who has been with Ferrari the past five years, at Honda's pre-season media event in Melbourne. Kevin Magnussen, the 22-year-old Dane relegated to reserve driver after just one season with McLaren, is here too to drive in place of Alonso, who may resume his seat for the Malaysian GP in a fortnight.

Button said that, like McLaren-Honda's engineers, he has studied all the data from Alonso's side-on crash in Barcelona and that there was "nothing to say anything was wrong with the car".

There has been speculation of the Spaniard suffering an electric shock, but Button has absolutely no reservation about driving the MP4-30 in Melbourne or the rest of the 20-race season.

Brit Button, 35, talked of how he and Alonso, 33, had raced in more than 500 GPs between them and that that experience would be invaluable in the first season of the new McLaren-Honda union.

Well it might, but driver experience alone won't make the MP4-30 a winner. It needs to be technically excellent, the equal or even better than the Mercedes W06, which is almost certain to be a street ahead of the Red Bull-Renault RB11, the Williams FW37 with an excellent Mercedes customer engine, and Ferrari's SF15-T.

McLaren and Honda have said publicly that they are not expecting much, at least from the first four GPs of the season, but clearly they are hoping to be making progress by the time the European races begin in May.

And, while he admitted that Melbourne was "not going to be an easy weekend for us", Button was certain that the MP4-30 had been created on "a really good platform".

"We've had our difficulties [in testing] and it will take time, but we have a fantastic base for the future," Button said.

Red Bull's RB10 did even less pre-season mileage in 2014, the first year of F1's V6 hybrid power units, yet Daniel Ricciardo qualified on the front row in Melbourne and crossed the finish line second in the race, only to be disqualified for a fuel-flow irregularity.

Button, a three-time winner of the Australian GP – in 2009, '10 and '12 – ruled out any similar "miracle" from the MP4-30 this Sunday.

"Will we be challenging for a win [in Melbourne]? No," he said.

"I'm excited to see what we have [in GP conditions rather than testing]."

McLaren's greatest era was with Honda engines and drivers Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost in the late 1980s and early '90s.

Button's first GP win came in 2006 with a Honda team that the manufacturer had taken over after the British American Racing experiment, but the Japanese company offloaded the team as the global financial crisis hit in 2008.

British engineering and team management whiz Ross Brawn picked up that outfit for a pittance, put Mercedes engines in a chassis originally designed for Honda V8s, and took Button to his world title – then promptly sold the team on again to Mercedes.

Button today paid due deference to Honda's F1 heritage but said he and Alonso wanted "to make history ourselves".

And he felt that the "tight layout" and "very aggressive approach" of the Honda RA615H power unit would be proven correct.

Coming back into F1 a year behind its rivals in the hybrid era, Honda has gone about things quite differently to Mercedes, Ferrari and Renault.

It has positioned its MGU-H – an energy recovery system connected to the turbocharger – between the compressor and the turbo at the rear of the engine, and its MGU-K – an advanced kinetic energy recovery unit – at the front.

Renault and Ferrari have the compressor and turbo next to each other and the MGU-H at the rear of the engine.

On the Mercedes the compressor and the turbocharger are at either end of the engine with the MGU-H in the middle, which is said to have made cooling easier, improved  efficiency overall and made it the benchmark power unit.

Button was confident of Honda "getting over hurdles" and said it was "only a matter of time before we're fighting at the front".

"The aero is cleaner ... it's the right way to go ... it will just take time."

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