Jenson Button says he and McLaren are remaining positive this year because they see "a great future" ahead of them with new engine supplier Honda.
The new McLaren-Honda partnership has got off to a slow start, with no points from the first two races and continuing reliability issues. The Honda power unit is currently being run at a lower state of tune for reliability purposes and the team is still running a relatively basic aero configuration, but Button can see improvements coming thick and fast.
"There is a lot in the pipeline for the future," he said. "A lot of people have asked me how the team and I are so positive and upbeat and it is because we see a great future. There's a lot of hard work now improving before we can get there."
Asked how big a step in performance McLaren could expect in China, Button said: "Hopefully very big. It's always tricky when you start off in the winter not doing much mileage and I think for everyone it was a big surprise to see us finish in Melbourne.
"For the outside world, they probably don't think we made a big step from Australia to Malaysia, but we did and it was very, very big. We weren't able to finish the race but we got a lot of useful information again for another big step forward.
"We have to see what we've got here. There's a very long straight here, which makes it a little bit tricky but we are all working very well together and I feel that we still haven't got the best out of what we have right now, so hopefully we can do that this weekend."