Button has doubts over practice tactics

2013 Brazilian Grand Prix

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Jenson Button said choosing not to run during practice to save tyres may have compromised McLaren’s qualifying effort.

Button was one of four drivers not to set a time during the final hour after practice at Interlagos, in order to preserve his tyre allocation for the weekend.

“We sat out most of FP3 in order to save tyres, which felt like the right thing to do at the time, but in retrospect maybe it wasn’t the right call,” said Button after qualifying 15th.

“After all, we hadn’t run in wet conditions on the intermediate tyres before qualifying, so we weren’t prepared for the problems we then encountered. But hindsight is a wonderful thing.”

“We were running a low-downforce configuration, which probably didn’t help either,” he added. “We felt that set-up was working for us yesterday, when it wasn’t as wet, but it probably hurt us in getting pressure into the tyre.”

“Still, we were good in Q1 – I ended up in [seventh place] – but, when it rained harder in Q2, I couldn’t get enough temperature into the tyres.”

Button added the team expect drier conditions for tomorrow’s grand prix: “Hopefully we’ll have some good racing, and we won’t spend too long behind the Safety Car.”

2013 Brazilian Grand Prix

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Image © McLaren/Hoch Zwei

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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12 comments on “Button has doubts over practice tactics”

  1. “But hindsight is a wonderful thing”,….Really?

    1. @fjvi – it’s just a standard, cliched, ironic English phrase.

      1. thank you, yes, I guess What I was just trying to be sarcastic in frustration, sorry about that. But being the last race of the season, its a sad departing phrase from mclaren and quite honestly reflects their whole year, as car is concerned, nothing against Mr. Button nor Mr. Perez either, but mclaren have used all their excuses this year.

  2. OmarR-Pepper (@)
    23rd November 2013, 19:31

    He’s already promising a Safety Car :P

    1. Does seem quite likely if the weather remains the same. Hopefully no safety car for too wet conditions.

      Interesting when they briefly showed the thermal camera on Webber’s car that there was no heat in the tires at all. It almost looked like a normal picture except for the brakes. Granted, he was on a warmup lap.

    2. @omarr-pepper yep Perez was in testing today … will be beter tomorrow, this place was not annoying enough

  3. It does look worrying for Mc, Button looks so tired of all of it and is Webber the one quiting, but then again he must be sad that was outscored by Perez in quali overall this season.

    1. Kind of a trade off considering Perez is the only one on the whole grid who crashed.

      1. Yeah, but he was still faster … Which isn’t bad as a lot of people say Button is good in these conditions …

        1. Often Button is good in the wet, but preparation is important – if he can’t get heat buildup in the tyres, his laptimes dosen’t come down.

    2. Can you really blame him? He has spent most of his career in midfield teams. He joined McLaren expecting to be fighting at the front (there or thereabouts), but the team have proved an inability to compensate for taking a wrong direction in car design. If the car was there for him, he’d be able to deliver, if it’s not (consistently), then he loses motivation because he wants to be fighting for wins and Championships. It was the same in 2008, the car was bad, and he was out-performed by Barrichello regularly.

      However, come 2009, and he won 6 out of the first 7 races. So if McLaren can sort themselves out for next year, then they won’t have a problem (Unless Magnussen takes time to get up to speed).

  4. “In hindsight…”

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