Q&A with McLaren’s Jenson Button 12 May 2012
Saturday in Barcelona was not Jenson Button’s day. Oversteer, and then understeer, ruined his running in qualifying and the best Button could muster was 11th on the grid. Although Lewis Hamilton’s penalty promotes him up to tenth, the Briton is still wondering where the speed he enjoyed on Friday has gone…
Q: Jenson, what went wrong?
Jenson Button: I don’t really know, as yesterday the car was fantastic. Today I have been struggling with the balance of the car. We have been fastest on the soft tyres, and I thought that we would make it into Q3. It was obviously not the case for me. The car has been very different today, although we haven’t changed much. During the entire qualifying session I had a lot of oversteer, and then on the final run we added a lot more front wing and I ended up having a lot of understeer. And there you go. And it doesn’t really help to have a set of option tyres spare for the race.
Q: What are you expecting from the race?
JB: If we figure out what problems caused the bad balance of my car today with the soft tyres, I would be much happier, as I was quite fast on them yesterday. It will definitely be a tough race, but luckily only Mark Webber has a set of new tyres around me.
Q: What are you able to change on the car between now and the race?
JB: There is not too much we can do, as we will definitely not change either the engine or the gearbox, which would change the behaviour of the rear end. And in terms of the setup we haven’t changed much from Friday’s free practice sessions, which leaves me feeling a bit surprised about the situation. Oversteer is something that doesn’t suit me at all. For sure we will have a very close look at the data from today and see if there is anything obvious which would explain the difference in the balance of my car.
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