Jenson Button was disappointed with his performance during qualifying for the Italian Grand Prix on Saturday, and will line-up fourteenth on the grid on Sunday just behind Manor Racing’s Pascal Wehrlein.
The McLaren-Honda driver knew the weekend was going to be tough but after both he and team-mate Fernando Alonso finished inside the top ten during practice on Friday, Button hoped to do better than he did in qualifying.
“This was always going to be a tough weekend for us, but I thought today might have been a little bit better,” said Button.
“It didn’t go quite as well as we might have hoped: I didn’t do a perfect lap – I drove some better laps through practice – and Fernando pulled out a little bit on me in Q2.”
Button hopes the race pace of his McLaren is better than it was during qualifying, and is looking to main gains on those in front of him, especially if the team can get another good start.
“We’ll make it good tomorrow,” insisted Button. “I still think we can race better than we qualified – that’s been a strength of ours for the past few races – and our starts have been good recently, so hopefully we’ll push forwards during the race.”
