Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsMcLaren

Button hopes strategy to blame for China disappointment

Despite running for much of the Chinese Grand Prix in the top ten, Jenson Button was ultimately disappointed to miss out on the points again this weekend after coming into this weekend with high hopes for a breakthrough performance from McLaren.

Button suggested that the decision to switch to the medium compound tyres for the long middle stint might be the reason for the poor result.

"It was fun for the first stint, we made up a lot of places at the start," Button said. "I think I was running well into the top ten, I think we were seventh, something like that, battling out there overtaking people and them overtaking us, it was good.

"I thought we were in a good position but we were on the medium tyre and stood still compared to everyone else, where our pace on the option was pretty good in the first stint. It was fun racing it with the quick cars for a while!

"After the safety car we put on the medium and I'm not sure it was the right [choice], we'll have to look at the data. Everyone else was on the soft tyre and it was just really, really difficult in terms of pace.

"We'll have to see if that was the right tyre to have on the car or not. If it wasn't then we had a chance of battling into the points, but if it was the right choice then we're still away from the points.

"Then we put that [supersoft] tyre on at the end trying to do a two-stop but it didn't look like it was ever going to work. We could have stayed out on the medium but I was in 11th and I thought I'd rather have some fun but the option tyre just disintegrated after about three laps.

"But anyway, we weren't in the points. Hopefully we made the wrong strategy call putting on the medium because if we didn't we're not quick enough to be in the points at the moment, because nothing else went wrong so I'm hoping that was the wrong choice and we made a mistake there.

"Maybe our pace just isn't good enough, or make it was the wrong choice of tyre, we'll have to have a look.," he added.

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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.