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McLaren's Jenson Button will use his second Honda power unit of the 2016 Formula 1 season at the Chinese Grand Prix following a failure in Bahrain.

Button was running 10th when he had a sudden loss of power seven laps into the 57-lap race and pulled off track to retire the car.

Following an investigation, Honda has chosen to change the internal combustion unit but is confident the root cause of the problem has been fixed.

"There was a mechanical issue on Jenson's ICE which we will replace for the upcoming race weekend," said Honda chief Yusuke Hasegawa.

"The situation has been thoroughly investigated and will be rectified in all future engines to be used."

Button said he has noticed an improvement with the Honda power unit but more work needs to be done on reliability.

"Until the point when we lost power, the car had felt very good, and I'm hopeful that we can continue that momentum in Shanghai and make the most of the package we have," he said.

"As always though, we need to work hard on our reliability.

"We've definitely seen an improvement in that area, but anything less than 100 per cent is never enough.

"It's important we take advantage of our progress to bring home the points we deserve and have something to show for all of our efforts.

"We definitely saw another step in the car's performance from Australia as we keep learning more about the handling and characteristics of the car, and bring new upgrades to each grand prix."

McLaren scored its first point of the 2016 F1 season in Bahrain with Fernando Alonso's stand-in Stoffel Vandoorne finishing 10th.