Jenson Button has said that McLaren has shown promising pace so far at this weekend's Malaysian Grand Prix.
The Woking-based outfit lacked pace during last weekend's Australian Grand Prix, but Button and teammate Sergio Perez both made it into the final part of qualifying at Sepang earlier.
The 2009 world champion told BBC Sport: "The dry pace is promising for us, we should be happy with eighth. Sounds strange because it's McLaren but we have to put everything in perspective and we've done a good job this weekend.
"I think we've moved forward a lot. Last race I feel we were over 1.5 seconds off the pace, probably quite a bit more than that. Here, in qualifying, if it was dry I think we could have been within a second, if not less.
"I can see where I'm going, we're improving. It's one week on from a tough weekend and already we have made some small improvements. We've done a great job to improve the car. We're still not quick but we are improving. We are making progress and that's positive."
Button will start tomorrow's race from seventh, following Kimi Raikkonen's demotion to 10th.
