F1: Delighted Button Finally Lands First McLaren Pole

Formula 1

F1: Delighted Button Finally Lands First McLaren Pole

A rare occurrence took place on Saturday in Belgium: Jenson Button won a pole...

Adam Cooper | http://www.speedtv.com | Posted September 01, 2012 Francorchamps (BEL)

Jenson Button got a monkey off his back at Spa Saturday when he finally secured his first pole for McLaren, in his 50th race for the team.

Button has not started from the top spot since his championship season with Brawn in 2009, but today he was in superb form. His teammate, Lewis Hamilton, who admitted he made a mistake by going for a different rear wing spec, qualified only eighth, but has moved up a spot thanks to Mark Webber’s penalty.

“Today we didn’t put a foot wrong all through qualifying,” said Button. “And I say ‘we’ meaning the team and myself. The engineers have really been on it today. It’s difficult when it’s just one hour of practice – and basically you get about 20 minutes on the circuit in a one-hour practice session – and yeah, they’ve really been on it. So, congratulations to them. Obviously, this isn’t a win – the points are tomorrow – but this is very important to us.

“I'm sure Lewis is disappointed to be where he is, but for me, a great day and hopefully this makes our life a little bit easier tomorrow, but still, as I said, we really don't know what's going to happen in the race here. We missed Friday because of the weather, and it's going to be difficult to know what the consistency is of everyone here. A little bit unknown, but we'll run through everything tonight, every scenario I'm sure, and make sure we're ready for tomorrow.”

Button said that as ever, it was all about getting it right with the tires.

“Especially with these temperatures and limited running, it's been difficult to get the tires in the working range,” he said. “This morning it was the other way around. They were working very well and then later on in the run they weren't working so well.

“In Q1 it was the other way around: lap one, I just had no front grip at all, as you probably heard me say, and then it was better on lap three. It's really difficult to understand how hard to push on an out lap and also if you're doing a three-lap run, on the second lap how hard to push, whether you should put more heat into the tires, the bulk or the surface. It's not just drive around as fast as you can anymore. It was good to get the balance today and get it right.”

Intriguingly, he conceded that he had no idea whether he has the right package for race conditions. Others on the grid are running more downforce.

“We're not sure whether we've got the right downforce for tomorrow,” Button said. “Our straightline speeds seem pretty good which is important for the race, especially when you've got a lot of fuel on board but then the negative is, you spend a lot of time in the middle sector. Possibly you can damage the tires more with less downforce but maybe that's not the case.

“Maybe with more downforce you generate more heat, so I don't know. We have to wait and see. It's all very unknown at the moment. I think the important thing is that I thought we expected the guys with higher downforce to maybe be quicker compared to us in qualifying. It's a nice feeling being on pole by three tenths, and these guys are obviously still pretty quick in a straight line compared to others but it's nice to have that advantage.”

Adam Cooper notched up his 27th season as a racing journalist in 2011. He has written about F1 for SPEED.com since 2005. Follow him on Twitter.