Button expects further progress in Britain

An upgraded RA107 delivered much-needed pace to the car at Magny-Cours and, although the team are still far from the front of the field, he is encouraged that they are now at least moving in the right direction.

And Button believes that if the team can resolve a few small issues, as well as getting more speed from the car in qualifying, then they could have a strong second half to the campaign.

"It is a massive base to work from and next weekend in Silverstone we can make another small step forward," said Button. "Hopefully everyone will get excited and we can keep improving from here.

"We were 30 seconds behind (Lewis) Hamilton who was third and that's not bad - we're normally about two laps and 30 seconds behind Hamilton. It is nice to get a reasonable result and Silverstone, which is very similar to France, we're hoping for something very similar. High-speed the car seems to be working well, and Silverstone there's a lot of that."

Button has pinpointed improving the car's low-speed handling characteristics as the most immediate issue to unlock more pace from the car.

"We didn't have the best balance - we could have done more to get the balance better," he said. "And when we do that we'll make another little step forwards. I was losing out a lot under braking - it was still quite inconsistent under braking on the prime tyres. So that's an area where we need to work on - and which should be easy to fix."

He added: "We've been working on this for seven or eight races. And to get a point and deserve it is a big step forward. We've made some steps but you don't really see it because others have made steps too.

"But I think you can see that even though everyone else came to France with a new aero package or whatever, we've made a bigger step than most, which is nice."