McLaren in the points at the Monaco Grand Prix

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Jenson Button

After three non-scoring results, McLaren returned to points with Jenson Button and Kevin Magnussen finishing in sixth and tenth places respectively at the Monaco Grand Prix.

While Jenson Button admitted that it wasn’t a bad result for the team,considering they haven’t scored a single point since March’s Malaysian Grand Prix, he was somewhat disappointed for being unable to overtake Force India’s Nico Hulkenberg,who was struggling on his worn out super-soft tyres.

"For the entirety of my final stint, I looked after my tyres and dropped back into the clear air behind Kevin,” Button described his race to reporters. “Then it was just about pacing myself to the end. I couldn’t quite get past Nico [Hulkenberg] at the end – he was struggling with his tyres, but whenever I pushed, I struggled as well, so I couldn’t make it stick.”

"This wasn’t a bad result for us – I just wish I could have picked off Nico at the end. It’s just a pity that Kevin’s late-race problem meant we couldn’t get more points for both cars at the finish."Despite engine problems and an incident with Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen,which cost him multiple positions in the race, Kevin Magnussen seemed satisfied with the fact that he was happy with the way his car was behaving,and that the team is moving forward in the right direction.

"Despite a lot of things going against us today – the long hold due to traffic at my pitstop, the unsafe release in front of me in the pitlane, and the engine issue – I can draw a lot from the fact that our car felt really good. That’s a real positive: it might be hard to see from the outside, but things are moving forward within the team.”

Kevin Magnussen & Kimi Raikkonen incident at Loews

The 21 year old also chose not to blame Kimi Raikkonen for his opportunistic manoeuvre at Loews, saying such incidents are common in racing."I’m still not really sure what happened with my car at the end of the race. And I didn’t see what happened with Kimi – I went to the inside to block his entry into the hairpin, but he chose to make a move anyway. It’s hard to overtake here, but he tried and it didn’t work. That’s racing."McLaren’s newly appointed racing director Eric Boullier admitted that the result is not what the team expected,but he was fairly satisfied with the performances of their two drivers."Sixth and 10th isn’t where we want to be, but we have to be realistic and acknowledge that this was a good performance – both from the perspective of the team, who worked brilliantly together, and also from both drivers, who drove tenaciously all weekend.

by Rachit Thukral