Ahead of his home race at Silverstone, Jenson Button talked to ESPN at an event hosted by McLaren's technology partner Esso about Lewis Hamilton's mentality, "clumsy" F1 cars and why he still believes in Honda

You've seen various teams dominate F1 during your career, is Mercedes dominance any different and will it need rule changes to turn it around?

I think 2004 for Ferrari was a massively dominant year and this feels just like that, but so did last year. I don't think we've ever had one team that has qualified on pole every race for a whole season, which Mercedes has done from Austria last year to Austria now. It is amazing and they are doing a fantastic job. The championship is between two guys, that possibly hurts the sport, but it's not their fault that they are so quick, it's everyone else's for not doing a good enough job. But they are doing a staggering job and fair play to them. I suppose I'm happy for them and I'm happy for the people that I have worked with for many years at that team [as BAR, Honda and Brawn] and it's down to all of us to do a better job to catch them.

How do you think Lewis is getting on this season, a lot of people have been impressed by the way he has bounced back from difficult situations like Monaco this year...

When we were team-mates, he could deal with knock-backs really well, but when he had the knock-backs it really hurt. For example, a lot of races where we were fighting and I won the race he struggled massively with it mentally, but then at the next race he would come out of it and win it. He's always had that mentality where he struggles with it over the weekend when he's being beaten, but he can turn it around very quickly, come out strong and win the next race. I don't think that's changed, but he's probably just not as outspoken as he was about it back then.

What have you made of Fernando so far, he's always been a gritty and determined character on and off the track, have you seen that in him?

He's good to work with. Nothing scares me about Fernando at all. As a team-mate, as a competitor, he's obviously very talented, he's good at development, as I am, and it's a great challenge for both of us to have someone to work with but also race against. Hopefully we can both start near each other [in a race], we've started from the back row because of reliability issues and I've not qualified and he's not qualified, so we haven't really raced against each other that much. It's great having a competitive team-mate, I've always wanted a competitive team-mate and I've always said the team-mate I want to have is Fernando and I'm enjoying it at the moment.

Clumsy F1

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Michelin has entered the frame as a potential tyre supplier from 2017, promising long-lasting tyres with minimal degradation, is that something that's appealing from a driver's point of view?

Michelin could also make tyres that degraded, but with them I found the tyres were very easy to understand. You could control the degrading and that was the important thing with them. If you didn't push the tyre on the first few laps, you had better tyres at the end of the stint, whereas now I find it very difficult to understand what to do with the tyres - also we get fed every bit of information about how hard to push and when not to push. Personally, I think Pirelli are in a position where they are told what to do with the tyres and the tyres should degrade and what have you, so they are doing what they are told and doing a good job also.

But personally, I'd love a tyre war. I don't know if Pirelli or Michelin are interested in doing that, but I'd love a tyre war and it pushes both manufacturers. It's a challenge and it's what we're all here to do. When we had that in 2004 it was just phenomenal, the tyres, they gained two seconds over a season and it was great to have. A lot of it was then down to driver fitness as well and whether he could hold his head up through a high-speed corner while pulling 5G for three or four seconds. That for me was the pinnacle of Formula One in any era and I was lucky enough to race in it.

The Strategy Group want to get some of that back, how important is the raw speed for F1 as a product?

It's very important. There is a lot of criticism about the sport right now, but there has always been criticism. I watched races from the 1970s and the commentators are talking about criticism then, so it's always been there. You've got to make sure you are on top of it and listen to the criticism and make a difference. Otherwise it builds up and you lose fans, and you definitely don't want to do that.

I think it's going in the right direction with the ideas for the future: wider rear tyres, wider cars, because now they are so skinny and long the car just snaps and I don't think it looks good on TV. We are not able to control it and we are supposed to be the best drivers in the world - of course, we do control slides and what we do with the car is beyond the imagination of most people - but sometimes it's unpredictable and it's not driver skill. There are a few things that need to change, and they will. I'm guessing it's 2017 and not next year, which is a shame, but I think that everyone understands change is needed and it's going to happen.

Which categories have you driven where it was possible to slide the car and why was that?

Formula One cars in 2004 and 2005 were snappy, but you knew it was coming. You would go into a high-speed corner with massive amounts of G-force and because you've pushed that little bit too much the tyre was on the limit and then it would snap on the exit. Now the issue is that you go into a corner and you get a rolling sensation. The car is more clumsy basically in high-speed corners, you turn in, it rolls over and it just sits there all the way through the corner and then you get the snap that you don't know is coming - it's the same with low-speed traction.

It's easier now for guys to get into a Formula One car from any category because it's not as quick anymore and in the past you felt that the car couldn't go that quick and you had to lift. You needed the balls to give it some, realise the downforce was working and put the car on the limit and that's when it would snap, but it would be controllable snaps. For me that was phenomenal, the way that the cars could change direction in Becketts [at Silverstone], but now they are a lot more clumsy. That's the direction we've gone and everyone realises it has to change and that is hopefully what we are going to see.

More power to come from Honda

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McLaren CEO Jonathan Neale said this week that there was no use telling you and Fernando Alonso bulls*** about the team's progress. So, given that you have full transparency on the situation, where is the car now compared to where you expected it to be at this stage?

I didn't have any expectations. Coming into a season with a new engine partner, you've just got to live in the moment and improve every time you jump in the car. In winter testing I jumped in and I thought 'Okay, it is where it is' but then I jumped in the next time and we had moved forward a second in lap time just in terms of drivability and the stuff that you've worked on with the team. I didn't have any expectations for where we would be, I knew we'd have a difficult season - Honda started the development of the engine two years ago from now, so a year and a half before we started racing. This is a test bed this year and the other manufacturers had three years before they started racing their engines, so it's always going to be more tricky.

I've seen what's in the pipeline in terms of development of the engine and obviously you have to take reliability into account, which is always going to be an issue when you start pushing the engine more, but there is a lot of power coming over the next few races, so that's positive. In terms of the car itself, it's a good car but still it's not the best car and it needs work. Aerodynamically, we have improved the car over the last couple of races - we haven't been able to show that because we haven't finished any races and we've had such big penalties - but we are hoping Silverstone will be a nice, clean weekend and we can see where we stand. I think points are on the cards, but nothing more than that. Then we go to Budapest, which is a circuit that should suit us more with the speed of the corners, but also because there aren't any long straights. So I'm hoping for some good points there as well. It's not easy for us, but as you say, there's no bulls*** and it's very straightforward. The team tells us where we are and we understand that there is a lot of work needed and that comes from Fernando and myself as well; we need to give the perfect feedback to develop this car.

You haven't driven the new aero package on track, but the team tested it in Austria, so what was the feedback from within the team?

It's a lot of downforce on the car and we also have some other parts for Silverstone that weren't at the test, which you really need to balance the package out. I've driven it in the simulator - it's always difficult to know how realistic it is - but it's a definite improvement. It's not going to win us races, but it's a good step forward and it's just making sure we also have the right philosophy in terms of aerodynamics and we are going in the right direction, and it does seem to be working correctly so we can keep building on that, which is good for the future.

The team has talked about changing the way it approaches its aerodynamic philosophy to achieve better drivability rather than peak levels of downforce. Is that coming across in the car?

The thing is that the first few tests we were like, 'Oh, my god! Is there a front wing on this car?' There was so much understeer and we were trying to get it so that as you add steering lock you didn't lose front end and didn't get washout, which is a big problem with a single seater. We've been working on that and now we have a lot more front end in the car and there is a lot more to work with. We are playing around with the set-up a lot more and there are areas we can go to that we couldn't before. It's not just in terms of downforce put on the car, but by putting this downforce on we were able to work with the mechanical set-up to improve the car more. We will see what happens in Silverstone, which should be a good test for it to see whether it is really working as we expect or not.

Outside McLaren we've learned more about the way the Honda engine is packaged and it is something quite different to your rivals. You've hinted before at some real potential there but when will we see it?

It's very aggressive, more aggressive than any other engine, which comes with issues of course - reliability issues. But we can't really change the design of the engine over the next couple of years anyway, so they had to go that aggressive and just deal with the reliability issues. Aerodynamically it helps massively because the air flow is so clean around the sidepods and towards the diffuser. So it is good, but then you get the other issues. They are working on them right now in terms of reliability and a lot of work is going into that. We know we have some issues, I'm already on my fifth engine and I think my sixth MGU-K and MGU-H, so we're two over already and we are only eight races in - we know there is work needed to be done.

We want to get some good results this year, but we also understand that it is a testing season for us. It doesn't mean we don't want to get results, we still want to come out and do the best we can towards the end of the year. I think Singapore is going to be the race that is going to be the standout race that we need to give it large and come out with a result. We are very good with slow speed corners, which has been a weakness of McLaren in the past. That's a positive, so it's definitely worked with the direction we've got. So Singapore has to be the race where we gear up and hopefully get the best result.

Eric Boullier said if the problems continue it could have a knock-on for next year, how much of a concern is that for you if you want to be part of a winning team at McLaren?

I think you've got to look at it for any team, if they don't start closing the gap towards the end of the year, next year could be a write-off as well. At the last race we were two seconds down, I don't think we'll be that far off at the next two, but you have to close the gap before the end of the season because you only have a couple of months to develop in the winter. So I think after Budapest and over the summer break we have to look at it and then we can comment on whether it is going to hurt us next year. But the thing is with us is we are very different than most teams because we are having to pull the power back because of reliability. If you were able to sort the reliability out you would gain half a second right there. Other teams don't have that, so we can gain a lot more over the winter, but still we need to start improving and cutting that gap back.