Jenson Button admits he’s surprised by McLaren-Honda’s lack of outright pace after he and team-mate Fernando Alonso once again failed to progress through to Q2 in qualifying for the Chinese Grand Prix.
Button had been impressed with McLaren’s one-lap performance during Friday’s free practice, but both MP4-30s missed the initial cut by a couple of tenths and will eventually line up on the penultimate row of tomorrow's starting grid.
Although the 2009 world champion did not hope to compete for a Q3 spot, he definitely expected to fare better in qualifying and challenge the cars on the outskirts of the pole position shootout.
“We thought we’d be closer to sort of top 10,” said Button. “Not that we were going into top 10 but I thought we’d be a little closer. I’m a little bit surprised. I thought we’d be more competitive.”
“In practice we seemed quite competitive, maybe we just ran less fuel than other people but I’d be surprised. I don’t know why it is in qualifying we lost pace, but the car actually feels good.”
Button is left quite puzzled because he feels his Honda-powered McLaren has been making headway around the Shanghai International Circuit.
“Most of the weekend, we’ve been happy with the pace of the car in terms of the improvements, the progress but in qualifying we did not have it.
“In terms of feeling it’s definitely a step forward. The car feels better. I think we had a pretty good balance through the weekend and even in qualifying but just the outright pace is not there.”
Asked about his target for tomorrow’s race, Button does not really know what to aim for after Saturday’s showing did not match his expectations.
“Hopefully we’ll be racing the cars in front. We expected to be competing with them in qualifying as well. But come into qualifying, they sort of made a big leap forward and we did not.
“Yesterday, I was very happy with the qualifying (pace) and not so much with the race (pace) so hopefully that’s turned around.”
Click here for Chris Medland's qualifying report from Shanghai.
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