Jenson Button offered a glimpse of hope of making the top 10 cut in Q2 but the McLaren driver was edged out by the Williams in the closing minutes of the segment which he finished 12th.
Button's weekend has been anything but clear sailing with set-up issues and a visit to the hospital to care for an eye irritation.
"It's been pretty tough for me," Button admitted.
"I had a few issues yesterday, and obviously stepped out of the car because of my eye. And this morning we had couple of problems, and I only did two laps on the softs this morning, so it was all a bit unknown going into qualifying.
Given McLaren-Honda's relative performance of late and the progress registered by the Woking-based outfit, P12 does not satisfy the 2009 world champion, although he did outqualify his team mate Fernando Alonso. Still, mileage in the car has been in short quantity for Button this weekend.
"Yeah, P12 is okay but we're still not quite there with the balance of the car. I've missed having time with the car which is tricky around a place like this. This is quite a tough circuit if you haven't had any mileage.
"It's not so bad to twelfth but of you look at it, even if we got everything together, to beat the Williams today and get in the top ten was going to be very tricky. Tomorrow is the race and we'll see what we can do."
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