Jenson Button says he’s satisfied with fourth on the grid in India, despite just losing out to team mate Lewis Hamilton.
Like other drivers Button had to work hard to get his tyres into their operating window, and he lost a bit of form when it mattered in Q3.
“Not too bad,” he said. “We really struggled to get the tyres working on lap one. So I went for a different strategy to most I think, I did a three timed lap run, which really worked for me in Q2. But in Q3 I didn’t have quite as good a balance as I had in Q2, a bit more understeer in the car. I guess the circuit gripped up.
“We didn’t expect it to grip up that much, and when it does, you pick up understeer. Not quite the perfect lap, but pretty happy to be fourth, the second row. Our start’s pretty good so we’ll see what we can from there.”
Regarding the Pirellis, he noted: “You’ve got to work them very hard. Our out laps are full speed, it’s like a qualification lap to try to get them up to temperature. It’s quite unusual, I mean you’re working the tyre quite hard round here, there’s a lot of high speed. And you’d think that it would be warm enough as well, wouldn’t you?”
Button said that he was happier with the car than he had been on Friday.
“We’ve changed quite a bit on the car and understood the tyres a bit more and how to work with them. We should be happy with what we’ve done today as a team. We’re not far off the Red Bulls and we’re in front of the Ferraris. It couldn’t have got much better. I’m pretty happy with what we’ve done, we’ve just got to see what the car’s like tomorrow.”
Adam Cooper F1 