Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsMcLaren

Button: Reliability pain softened by performance

Jenson Button says he is not too disappointed to have missed qualifying for the Mexican Grand Prix because he has seen progress with the Honda power unit.

Honda’s phase four power unit has proven troublesome for Button throughout the weekend, limiting his running in all three practice sessions before eventually causing him to miss out on qualifying at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez. However, from the running he managed to do on Friday Button says he felt the improvements with the updated engine.

"Yeah, definitely [progress], we were eighth and ninth in FP2 with limited running so it's definitely getting there but obviously we have other issues,” Button said. “But I would still rather have some reliability issues and have power, so I'm not too disappointed.”

With Button struggling for track time, he admits he goes in to the race with little knowledge of how the car will perform on high fuel so will rely on team-mate Fernando Alonso in the early laps.

“It’s been tricky for me. We’ve run two different engines this weekend, but we’ve had on this morning’s engine there was a misfire and also a system’s failure, so we had to change it to make sure it works from tomorrow and that’s why I couldn’t go out in qualifying.

“The other engine had a different problem, yesterday. It was a shame I couldn’t do qualifying, even if I was going to start last anyway, but it’s always the most fun part of the weekend for the drivers. I did a couple of laps with low fuel yesterday and it was quite fun.

“With no high fuel running yet it will be a difficult race but I’m still looking forward to it. I want to go for it in the race, but it’s not going to be easy, for sure. I’ll just follow Fernando on the start and then see how it goes.”

REPORT: Rosberg beats Hamilton to Mexican GP pole

AS IT HAPPENED: Mexican Grand Prix - Qualifying

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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.