Jenson Button has likened sections of the bumpy Istanbul Park circuit to a motocross track after both McLarens visibly struggled under braking for turn 12 during Friday practice for the Turkish Grand Prix.
Button set the fastest time of the afternoon session, but even on his quick laps the front of his McLaren was bucking violently over the bumps at turn 12.
"I'm pretty happy with how today went," he said. "The car's been working reasonably well - there are always things you want to improve, but we've made some good progress and have a lot of useful data to go through. Trying to get the car to ride the bumps well into turn 12 has been difficult, but we improved it through the session. turn 12 is really bumpy - it's like they put a motocross jump in there! And turn eight's quite tough too because, depending on your balance, it can damage the front and rear tyres. It's about getting the balance right, which we concentrated on today.
Button also revealed that McLaren was not running all its planned upgrades for this race: "We haven't put everything on the car that we wanted to this weekend, which is disappointing, but we still have some useful upgrades so it's nice to keep moving forwards."
After the McLaren drivers completed just three laps between them in the rain-soaked morning practice, team principal Martin Whitmarsh said the car's race pace was "extremely promising" in the dry afternoon session.
"This morning's uncharacteristic heavy rain meant that we opted to conserve our supply of wet and intermediate Pirelli tyres by sitting out the majority of the session," he said. "With cold and unpredictable weather predicted for the remainder of the weekend, and with relatively little to learn from running on a wet track, we felt it was more prudent to save the rubber for Saturday and Sunday.
"Happily, this afternoon's session turned out drier than we'd imagined, and we were able to pack the majority of our day's run-programme into P2. Indeed, both drivers' long-run pace looks extremely promising."
However, Whitmarsh said the team was not getting carried away with the strong showing so early in the weekend.
"Lewis and Jenson felt happy with the balance of their cars, although both said that the bumps upon entry to turn 12 were fairly severe and unsettled the car," he added. "It's too early to read anything into this afternoon's times, but we're happy that we've found a good baseline for the set-up and that we can build upon it for the rest of the weekend."
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