Jenson Button believes too many mistakes and costly errors are the reason McLaren haven’t been able to truly challenge the “perfect” job done by Red Bull and Sebastian Vettel.
Speaking in the Singapore paddock on Thursday, the 2009 world champion put the vast lead both Vettel and the team have amassed down to their ability to avoid silly mistakes, something McLaren hasn’t been able to match, despite having a quicker car at times.
“Seb has got a great car underneath him and has done the perfect job with it,” said Button. “When someone is in that form and the car is working like that and the team doesn’t make mistakes, it is very hard to beat them when you don’t have one of those aspects.
“For us, we have made too many mistakes this year and we haven’t quite got it together on a race weekend, even when we have had the performance. So that is something we have got to work on, and something we are working on.”
Had everything gone well, Button believes it could have been a different story: “If you look at the last few races, if everything had gone well then we would have had a really good chance of fighting Seb for the win. But we haven’t done a good enough job. He has done a very good job this year and I am sure he is proud to be world champion, which I am sure he will be in the next few races.”