Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsMcLaren

Button misses qualifying in Mexico

Jenson Button will not take part in qualifying for the Mexican Grand Prix after further reliability issues for McLaren-Honda.

Having missed out on running in FP1, a scheduled power unit change saw Button fail to make the start of FP2 on Friday. Saturday was just as bad for the 2009 world champion, with his FP3 session ending after just four laps with an issue which requires a power unit change, in turn ruling him out of qualifying.

"All weekend it's been tough, we've had a lot of issues," Button said. "I've done hardly any running really. It's tough, we had a systems failure with this power unit so it means that we have to revert to the other power unit for the race, so I miss qualifying."

And asked how the race will be for him on Sunday, Button replied: "Tough.

"It's going to be a tough day because I haven't done any high-fuel running or anything, so we'll see."

McLaren confirmed the news on Twitter, describing the issue as a signal problem which stopped him earlier on Saturday.

"The underlying signal problems on JB's engine have not been resolved," the team tweeted. "Therefore, he won't take part in quali. Our focus is now on the race."

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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.