Jenson Button believes McLaren can make Q2 in China after a being "pleasantly surprised" by the amount of progress the team showed on Friday.
McLaren-Honda has been a long way off the pace of everyone but Manor in competitive sessions so far in 2015 but Friday in Shanghai suggested it could move towards the midfield battle this weekend. Though not a complete indicator of outright pace, Button finished 10th in FP2 and he says McLaren is encouraged by the how the day unfolded.
When asked if his final position in FP2 felt like a milestone, Button laughed and said: "Milestone, no. P1 would be a milestone and we have a long way to go until that. It's been a pleasure to drive the car today and I've enjoyed it. Still a lot of work needed long-term but also short-term this weekend. The deficit to the front is obviously what we look at, not the cars around us at the moment, and I think we've made some good progress again this weekend.
"I need a bit of work but on outright pace you're never happy when you're P10. I'll be very impressed if we're P10 on the grid - I think it's very difficult when it comes to qualifying here. The important thing here is we saw good progress this weekend and that's all we could hope for. It's not a short-term thing, this team, but I think everyone should be pleasantly surprised with the progress we've made this weekend."
Button says his sights are on making Q2, something McLaren has failed to do so far this season.
"We will see. At the moment you would say definitely but who knows when tomorrow comes."
When asked about Q3, the 2009 world champion replied: "No. I think there's always a possibility but Q2 is more realistic. To be fair, Q2 or Q3 doesn't really excite me either way; we want to be at the front. It's more about what we achieve in terms of steps forward with the car and the feeling of the car, the feeling is good but there's still room for improvement and I'm pretty happy with the direction we are taking."