Jenson Button believes McLaren could make a substantial jump up the tightly-packed midfield at the Spanish Grand Prix even though he thinks it will be difficult to match the team's rate of development since the Australian Grand Prix.
McLaren is yet to score a point since returning to Honda power this season but has drastically cut its lap-time deficit to the front since Melbourne, where Button finished two laps down on Lewis Hamilton. Teams traditionally bring lots of upgrades to Spain but Button does not think that necessarily means McLaren can replicate the gains made at every race since the season opener.
"There's upgrades in every area really," Button said. "We haven't come here with a second [extra] of lap time, because that just doesn't happen in Formula One these days, even when you start where we did. It's a good chunk - there's upgrades with the power unit, aerodynamically with the car, but also mechanically there are a few things as well, so it's a good amount."
When asked if he expected to see McLaren continue to decrease the gap to pole in the same fashion it had at the first four races, Button replied: "I'll be very happy if we did the same again, yes. It's getting to the point where it's a lot more difficult to have the same amount of progress percentage-wise. But we'll have to see, I think the whole middle pack is very close and for the taking maybe."
The Brit admits he is not too concerned about scoring McLaren's first points of the season because the team is still a long way from where it wants to be.
"[Scoring points] depends on what other people do. If every other car has a good weekend it's going to be very difficult to score points. But Fernando [Alonso] out-qualified one Red Bull, one Toro Rosso and one other car as well so it just means other people aren't getting their weekends together. If we can get our weekend together, and they don't, yes there's a good chance of scoring a point but if we do we're not going to be jumping up and down with joy because it's not our aim. It's more the gap to the front which is important to us; if the gap is eight tenths smaller or three tenths smaller that's the thing that really matters to us rather than just P10."
McLaren revealed a new livery ahead of the Barcelona race and Button gave it a ringing endorsement.
"It looks good. It doesn't make any difference to me - if it's quicker, it's better. Hopefully for the fans, they like it, that's the main thing and the reason why it's done. People see the car and think it looks good and I think that's important. A lot of the cars look similar on the grid so it's nice for a car to stand out and look different."
Button did not start the Bahrain Grand Prix due to recurring electrical issues which hampered his entire weekend, but the 2009 world champion is confident McLaren has fixed the problem.
"The first and last one were obviously reasonably big issues, car-stoppers. The one I had on Friday afternoon just a precautionary stop on the circuit, but the other two issues were issues we had to solve for this race which we think are solved, yes."