Jenson Button has said that a completely new rear end should stand them in good stead for fighting for victory in this weekend’s British Grand Prix, the home race of his McLaren team.

Button -who is currently lying 2nd in the championship – and his teammate Hamilton were both on the podium last time around in Valencia, but unfortunately neither driver was on the top step, something they will be hoping to change at the new Silverstone circuit layout in Northamptonshire.

However, to do this, the updates will need to be working right away. With an upgrade of this size this is often a difficult thing to do, but clearly McLaren think it is vital that they introduce the blown rear diffuser.

“We have some new parts on the car that should lift us a little bit,” the Brit said. “We know Ferrari are going to be very, very quick and we think Red Bull also, and Mercedes.

“But our package will really lift us into a good position where we can fight for a victory this weekend.

“It [this update] is very important for the rest of our season. They don’t always work when you put them on the car as we’ve seen with a couple of the teams in Valencia; you need to work with it. Hopefully we’ll get it all right before this weekend – that has to be our aim. You can’t hope that it’ll just be ok at the next race because you can’t give a race away this year.”

The 30-year-old is expecting a busy weekend as the Woking-based team fine-tune the upgrades on the MP4-25:

“It goes to the wind tunnel, it goes to the simulator and it’s tested many times before it gets on to the circuit. There is always fine tuning you need to do over a race weekend, so we’re going to have a busy Friday and Saturday I think.”

As well as work in the simulator, the McLaren boys have had some on-track experience this week, in the form of a rather impressive Scalextric track: