Button says Vettel's sixth was target but pleased to recover from Friday "disaster"; Brit wins Magnussen qualifying head-to-head
Monday 24 November 2014 15:26, UK
Jenson Button expressed disappointment to qualify only eighth for the Abu Dhabi GP, although his frustration was tempered by the fact his disjointed Friday had proved such a “disaster”.
Ahead of what Button has acknowledged himself could be the final appearance of his career on Sunday, the 34-year-old underlined the merits of his candidature for a McLaren contract renewal by outqualifying young team-mate Kevin Magnussen at Yas Marina to edge their tight season-long duel on Saturdays 10-9 - the first intra-team qualy battle he has won since 2007.
Whether such a ‘victory’ will carry any fresh weight in McLaren’s final deliberations over who partners Fernando Alonso in their 2015 line-up is open to debate, however.
Following the late-night disqualification of the two Red Bulls, Button will start fifth, and blamed slow traffic on his final warm-up lap for failing to extract the best time. However, given Friday had proved so problematic for him – he missed most of P1 and then the first third of P2 with separate mechanical issues – Button was aware his side of the garage had recovered well.
“Overall I’m a bit disappointed really. Q3 I really struggled on the last run,” he told Sky Sports F1.
“For some reason the cars in front were massively slow, I think all three of us [behind them] struggled as a result because of that. The Williams was slow and Fernando [Alonso] struggled and actually aborted his lap and I just had massive locking everywhere. It’s a shame: I think we were six or seven hundredths off sixth, Vettel, and that’s what we were hoping for.
“So it’s not great but considering the disaster yesterday I think as a team we’ve done a very good job of getting it back and getting a reasonable balance. Fair play to the guys; a day like yesterday is very, very difficult. So thank you to them.”
Irrespective of whether it turns out to be the final grand prix of his distinguished career, Button says he simply wants to have “fun” in Sunday’s race – although conceded his lack of long-running on Friday could prove problematic.
Asked what his target was for the race, Button replied: “To have fun out there. It’s not a circuit renowned for its great races in terms of fights, but that’s what I want tomorrow, and hopefully moving forward fighting, not moving back.
“There are some tough competitors around me and we’ll see what we can do with the strategy. We’ve missed out on a lot of long running so I don’t really know where the car is. On the option tyre I understand the car pretty well on the long run, but the prime I have no idea.”
Button's biggest drama during qualifying occured in the opening stages of Q2 when he was asked to abort his opening hot lap in the session when the McLaren pitwall realised his MP4-29 had been released with insufficient fuel to complete the run.
“We had an issue with one of the fuel pumps. We saw some problems on the telemetry so we preferred to bring him in,” McLaren Racing Director Eric Boullier told Sky F1. “We understand now there was a problem with one of the fuel pumps in the garage, so we changed to the spare one.”
While Button responded over the radio "are you serious?" when informed of the problem, he later praised his McLaren crew's calm handling of the situation after he went on to make the final stage of qualy.
"It’s full of emotion qualifying and especially when you’ve almost finished your lap and you see it’s good enough to be inside the top ten in Q2," he told reporters. "So it made a little bit more difficult, but to be fair once we wheeled the car back in the garage I felt that everyone was very, very relaxed, which helped me relax as it a very stressful time.
"I think we handled it very well. Obviously we don’t like seeing issues like that but I think it was handled very well and we got back out there and were able to put in a reasonably good lap."
