Button to miss qualifying amid Honda woes

Jenson Button will miss qualifying for the Canadian Grand Prix after more engine trouble for Honda.

Fernando Alonso required an engine change on Saturday morning which saw the double world champion miss the majority of FP3, emerging with ten minutes of the session to go to complete his first laps. However, Alonso was limited to just three in total as team-mate Button duly stopped on track.

Button's problem is an ERS-related failure, and McLaren has confirmed the time it takes to investigate the issue and complete any work on the car will see Button miss qualifying.

Honda's woes this weekend come despite an update to the power unit, which has seen two development tokens used for what motorsport boss Yasuhisa Arai says is a combination of performance and reliability.

"Both, but not so much increasing the performance," Arai told F1i. "We prepared not only for this race but also for the future during the season. So we need to upgrade many parts and many components."

Click here for Friday's gallery from the Canadian Grand Prix

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.

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