Button needed piece of carbon removing from eye

Jenson Button has explained a piece of carbon got stuck in his eye during FP2 which needed removing during a trip to hospital.

The McLaren driver completed just 16 laps in the second practice session before he went to the medical centre due to an eye irritation. He was then sent to Mannheim hospital for a check-up where they removed "a tiny carbon piece" from his eye which he will treat with drops for the rest of the race weekend.

“I was going down the pits straight and something got into my eye," Button explained. "I’ve had it before, getting a tiny carbon piece stuck into your eyeball, so they had to take it out. It was actually stuck in my eyeball, which was good, so they took it out.

"It still hurts, because it’s scratched, so they gave me some eye drops but it’s all good. It was probably carbon dust from the brakes and when I had it before they needed to use a needle to take it out; this time that was not necessary, thankfully."

Focusing on his performance before his eye problem, Button is confident McLaren can fight for a place in Q3 and to be the fourth quickest team behind Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull.

"I think in terms of qualifying speed we’re at the same level as last week, we have to hope to be best of the rest. If we can be behind the top three tops that’s not a bad position to be in, before heading into the summer break. Of course I had to stop early because of the problem but the car didn’t feel too bad before that.

"The aim has got to be to be right behind the top three teams. I didn’t get a good lap with low fuel, when I was 8^th quickest, because of traffic, so I could have gone quicker. And I’ve missed the long run because of my problem, so we’ll have to make up for it. The team needed six laps of data on the supersofts, I got just those laps in, so we should be OK."

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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.