Button Blames His Lack of Speed Not Tyres for Poor Performance
As Force Indian won their first ever pole position through Giancarlo Fisichella, Jenson Button suffered his worst qualifying result so far this season.
The Brawn driver will start from 14th position, but it wasn’t the infamous tyres problem them let him down.
Button said: “I didn’t it make because I wasn’t fast enough. It’s going to make tomorrow very difficult.”
Beleaguered Button is still leading the title race by 18 points ahead of his Brawn teammate Rubens Barrichello – however the Brazilian will be looking to close the gap tomorrow when he starts the race in fourth place.
Meanwhile, Lewis Hamilton, who was lucky to make it beyond the first round of qualifying, will will start tomorrow in 12th place.
Hirohide Hamashima, director of motorsport tyre development for Bridgestone, believes the teams tyre strategy tomorrow will play an important role.
He said: “The tyres are very close together on ultimate lap time, with the soft giving better grip, but the medium giving better stability.
“Just like Friday, we could not find any graining today and this means that both compounds are working well. Because of the close performance of the tyres we believe there will be a wide range of strategy possibilities for tomorrow’s race, and we will be interested to see what happens.”
Alex Kapadia, Operations Team
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