McLaren face long road to rescue season

The intrigue around McLaren's underperforming car is such that Sergio Perez, a 23-year-old fresh out of Sauber, was asked on Friday if he felt he had made a mistake in joining the team. Even studiously diplomatic team-mate Jenson Button was blunt in expressing the MP4-28's alarming lack of pace, admitting: "We are not very fast."

A danger is growing that McLaren, again dismally adrift in Malaysia as they finished 11th and 12th in free practice yesterday, could find themselves scrapping for minor points for a quarter of the season at least. While team principal Martin Whitmarsh last night paid tribute to his team's "indefatigable esprit de corps", logistics of F1 touring dictate that major technical refinements are unlikely to be made before the European swing begins in May. "I don't know what is going to happen," Button conceded. "I try not to think about it."

Button acknowledged that McLaren would not be competing for a victory at Sepang unless the race tomorrow (Sunday) degenerated into a repeat of last year's rain-induced chaos. "I don't think we will fight for a win, unless it is wet," the 2009 world champion said. "It is not the best position to be in, but we have to do the best we can."

The 33-year-old stopped short of identifying McLaren's 2013 car as the worst the Woking team had produced in recent memory, pointing instead to the 2009 version that he vanquished while at Brawn. "That one was not very special and still they won two races," he said. "We are a long way behind, but there is a lot of room for development. We might suddenly turn the corner, but in Australia we were 1.5 seconds off the pace."

Explaining McLaren's deficiencies in Melbourne, where he and Perez managed just two championship points between them, Button said: "The car was hitting the ground so hard it could have damaged the car. Here with a smoother track, we should be in better shape."

"No one inside McLaren is satisfied with where our performance is," Sam Michael, the team's sporting director, said. He denied there would be any move to revert to the model that won the last two races in 2012. "We are about winning races, and every bit of focus is on the 2013 car. The past history of McLaren is to recover from situations like this extremely strongly. I don't think it will be long for us to be back up there."

In reality, McLaren still find -themselves comfortably behind Lotus' Kimi Raikkonen, the winner at Albert Park and the fastest driver in yesterday's second practice session. Lewis Hamilton was only ninth for Mercedes but denied that his team were struggling after his fifth place last Sunday. "I felt we were able to make some good steps with the set-up," he said. "We are stronger in race pace than Melbourne."