 The team 's struggles continued as the championship moved to Brazil for the penultimate round , with Alonso stopping twice on the circuit during free practice with a recurring engine fault that forced him to miss qualifying . Button and Alonso finished the race in fifteenth and sixteenth place respectively , which became fourteenth and fifteenth when Felipe Massa was disqualified for a tyre pressure irregularity . Button later noted that the speed deficit of the RA615H around the Interlagos circuit relative to the other engines was " scary " despite Honda 's extensive development programme . By the time the season came to a close in Abu Dhabi , McLaren had completely shifted the MP4 @-@ 30 's development so that the car became a testing platform for the 2016 season , with " more than half " of the parts being considered experimental , including a brand @-@ new configuration for the rear suspension geometry . Despite an expected speed deficit on the long straights of the Yas Marina Circuit — with the MP4 @-@ 30 recording speeds some 30 km / h ( 18 @.@ 6 mph ) slower than the fastest cars through the speed trap — and minor contact with Valtteri Bottas in the pits , Button was complimentary of the car in his drive to twelfth , describing it as " the best it had felt all year " . Alonso went on to finish seventeenth after receiving a drive @-@ through penalty for his role in causing a collision with Pastor Maldonado and Felipe Nasr on the opening lap . McLaren used Alonso 's race as a chance to experiment with full and continuous deployment of the RA615H 's Energy Recovery Systems — the first time the team had done so under race conditions — which saw Alonso set the third @-@ fastest lap of the race , less than three tenths of a second slower than the fastest lap of the race recorded by Lewis Hamilton . 
