F1 News, Reports and Race Results

Button not discouraged by rear-wing setback in Q1

Jenson Button says that he will be doing his best to fight back from 17th place on the grid for the British Grand Prix following a problematic qualifying on Saturday.

Button was only able to make one qualifying run in Q1, and was still in the garage when the session came to an end, but the driver explained that there hadn't been a mistake on the team's part, and nor was the lowly starting position representative of McLaren's pace this weekend following a promising engine upgrade from Honda.

"We are out by three hundredths, which is shame. Obviously there was a lot more pace in the car," said Button.

"One of the rear-wing endplates became detached from the floor on my first flying lap in Q1, and the rear end of the car slowly deteriorated for the remainder of the lap."

The team was still attempting to repair the issue when the chequered flag came out to end Q1 leaving Button on the wrong side of the cut-off to make it into the second round.

"It wasn't finished in time. It was 20 seconds late to get out of the pits.

"The first problem was obviously we had the issue from turn eight until the end to the lap. But we also could not get it fixed in time to get back out again and set another lap.

"I’m still smiling because it is what is. We’ll deal with it, and we’ll come out of it stronger. I’ll be hoping for rain and something unexpected to happen in the race, and I’m still aiming for points tomorrow."

McLaren racing director Eric Boullier confirmed that the problem would be taken care of well in time for the race.

"Yes, it's going to be okay for tomorrow. It was a small manufacturing issue with the end plate. Unfortunately in his laps the end plate broke, he lost rear down force and the car wasn't balanced.

"To fix it we had to pop it and unscrew it and unfortunately it took too long to do it on time," Boullier added. "That was a great pity, because Jenson was understandably keen to impress at his home 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.