Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsMcLaren

Button hopes to avoid last row

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Jenson Button says he is hoping McLaren is able to avoid qualifying on the last row of the grid for the Australian Grand Prix.

Friday practice was a tough affair for McLaren, with just 13 laps possible between the two cars in FP1 and Kevin Magnussen crashing early in FP2. While Button completed 21 laps in the second session he was over 3.6s off the pace and admits he may qualify at the back if Manor fail to make the grid having not run on Friday.

"I’m hoping it won’t be the last row of the grid tomorrow, hopefully 20 cars will run!" Button said. "It’s not going to be easy, we all know that, and that’s the important thing, we are all working as one.

"We are not pulling any fingers, we are just solving the problems as we go and hopefully we will be competitive sooner rather than later. There is a lot of hard work needed, but we knew that coming into this season.

"We need a bucket load of both [speed and reliability] right now, but we are all in it together and we will fight as hard as we can to get the best result we can this weekend."

While keen to avoid starting from the back row, Button says McLaren has not set any firm targets for the weekend in terms of results.

"[Reliability] is always going to be in the back of your mind because we haven’t done a race distance yet and this is all still learning for us on a new track with new experiences. We are doing the best job we can and getting our heads down to focus on getting the best we can out of this weekend.

"I don’t have any real targets in terms of finishing. There is a lot of data gathering needed tomorrow and in terms of qualifying it will be tricky I’m sure and getting out there for as many laps as we can will be tricky in qualifying but we’ll see how it goes."

Click here for Friday's gallery from the Australian 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.