Jenson Button is hopeful that Brawn GP have finally overcome the problems which have compromised their title hopes, but admits that he won’t be sure until Friday practice.
The Brackley team have seen their dominant lead in both championships erroded over the last three races, by Red Bull Racing, after struggling to get the BGP 001’s tyres up to operating temperature.
However Button is optimistic that the team’s hard work over the summer break will have been enough to restart his world championship bid.
“Well, after the break and after the two weeks when they couldn’t work at the factory, they spent a few days to work on the car and come up with some ideas,” Button told Autosport ahead of this weekend’s European Grand Prix.
“Then I spoke to my engineer ‘Shov’ (Andy Shovlin) last Monday, and we ran through everything and what we had for this circuit aerodynamically in terms of improvements. And also the step by step over the season in terms of where we have gone with the car mechanically the ride, the weight distribution and the rest of the mechanical set-up.
“We ran through everything, and saw a bit of a trend, so we think we know some of the reasons for our issues with tyre temperature. Normally, going in the direction that we have gone is the preferred route because you are looking after the tyres, but with the way the tyres are you need to be aggressive with them. You need to get them to work and you need to get them into their working range otherwise the aerodynamic improvements you have on the car mean nothing because the four tyres are the things that are on the road and if you cannot get them working then nothing else really matters.”
He added: “We know getting the tyres to work is important, so we come here this weekend positive, as we should be, and we are going to test a few things that we had on the car in the earlier races, do some comparisons between both cars and on both cars, and we will see how it goes.
“By the end of tomorrow we might put our hands up and go, we really do not know why we still cannot get the tyres working, but I am positive that we know the reasons and we can get the car back to where it was. It is not we can improve the car, it is understanding the issues and getting the car back to where it was three races ago where the car felt good and then you can see the improvements that you have made with the car.
“So it is a strange situation, but even if the track is cool here this weekend I am hoping and I really feel that we can get this car working and get the tyres working but we will not know until after tomorrow. It all sounds great in the engineering office, and I believe them that this is the direction we need to take, but we will see tomorrow.”
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