Frustrating day for Button

17 April 2015 06:47

Jenson Button was left to reflect on "not a great day" and fears he will again be at the back of the grid for Sunday's Bahrain Grand Prix.

Just three minutes into the first practice session, Button's McLaren suffered an electrical fault that cut the engine and forced him into a spin at turn one of the Bahrain International Circuit.

Although the car was recovered, his mechanics failed to fix the fault until just before the start of FP2, in which three laps in he had to stop out on track as a safety precaution for the engine.

Again the car returned to the garage, and although he made it out on track later in the session, further issues arose that compromised his running.

The 35-year-old ultimately finished down in 19th place, sandwiched between Manor duo Will Stevens and Roberto Merhi, with the best of his 19 laps almost 4.5 seconds off the pace of Nico Rosberg in his Mercedes.

Clearly frustrated Button said: "The guys worked really hard, from P1 to P2 they did a great job but we still had our problems in P2.

"I went out on the soft tyre but had to quickly come back in, and then I went out on low fuel when everyone else was on high fuel, so it was difficult to get in any running. Overall not a great day.

"There was a lot of useful data from the other car (Fernando Alonso), but the frustrating thing is our cars were set up quite differently to get a lot of useful information about parts, and we weren't able to do that on our car.

"It doesn't help either of us for Saturday but hopefully we've resolved the issues I've had."

Button, though, knows the teams ahead of a struggling McLaren will all turn up the gas in qualifying, which is likely to leave only the Manor boys behind the Briton and Alonso, as was the case in China on Sunday.

"I think some teams were on high fuel all day as well, so it's not going to be an easy weekend," added Button.

"But we're not kidding ourselves, we know it's going to be a tricky qualifying session and I suppose for us at the moment we're going to qualify near the back.

"In reality it's not such a problem. The race pace is something that is more important."

Source: PA