Australian GP: Jenson Button says McLaren just focused on mileage

McLaren managed just 380 laps across the 12 days of running, nearly 1000 laps fewer than Mercedes' tally, and the team was not able to complete a race distance.

The Woking-based team has also yet to run its Honda power in race spec, with the Japanese manufacturer gathering just 1087 miles of on-track running compared to Mercedes' benchmark 11,413 across its four teams.

Button therefore has limited expectations for Melbourne, insisting that long-term goals are more important.

"Our aim is to finish and get enough mileage under our belt to sort out niggly problems," said Button. "It's a case of getting out there and seeing what we have.

"We have not had a lot of testing so we haven't done much development work or basic set-up work. I have no aim in terms of position.

"I think you're going to have doubts [about finishing] because it would be stupid not to when you've not completed a simulated race distance yet.

"We want to win races, scraping into the points in Melbourne doesn't interest us.

"It's the future which is interesting and the important thing for us is to see big gains throughout the year."

Team-mate Kevin Magnussen, who is standing in for Fernando Alonso while he recovers from his testing accident, had similarly low expectations for the weekend.

"I didn't get as many laps as I thought I would get [in testing]," said the Dane. "I got nearly 40 laps and I think all those were low fuel so I'm prepared for that.

"But I've not done high fuel so it will be interesting to see how it feels."