F1: Button Second Place Gives McLaren A Boost

Formula 1

F1: Button Second Place Gives McLaren A Boost

On a day when mechanical gremlins doomed Lewis Hamilton, teammate Jenson Button shined...

Adam Cooper | http://www.speedtv.com | Posted September 23, 2012 Marina Bay (SGP)

Jenson Button (Pictured) ran strong in Singapore but was no match for Sebastian Vettel. (Photo: LAT Photographic)

Jenson Button gave McLaren some cheer on a disappointing evening in Singapore by taking second place.

Button ran third until teammate Lewis Hamilton retired, and that moved him up a spot.

Button was fast on the supersoft tire in the first stint, but found life difficult once he’d switched to the soft prime tire. That meant he couldn’t take the fight to leader Sebastian Vettel.

“The pace on the supersoft was good,” said Button. “I could look after the tires pretty well – not that it did me any good, anyway, because after the pit stops they had a gap because they went to new tires earlier than me, so it didn’t really work out. And on the harder of the two tires, the balance wasn’t as good and I couldn’t really look after the tires, and degradation was reasonably high so, yeah, not too bad.

“It would have been nicer to have pushed Sebastian a bit harder; you never know around a street circuit when you push someone hard, so there was always the possibility that we could do one step better, but it wasn’t to be; Sebastian didn’t make any mistakes and we came away with a second. Reasonably good points, and it’s nice to get some good points back on the board after the DNF in Monza.”

Button admitted he was concerned by his teammate’s gearbox failure, especially as it came after his own fuel pump related retirement in Italy.

“For about three or four laps it was spraying gearbox oil," Button said. "I thought it was the backmarker at the time, and then I saw Lewis pull over so I knew that was from his car. It’s disappointing for the team to have another DNF – two weekends on the trot.

“It’s something that we need to sort out because, as a team over the race weekends, we’re doing a great job and the pace is there with the car. Over the last few races the results we’ve had have been very good but it’s just we can’t seem to do that with both cars. It’s something, for sure, we need to work on for the rest of the season.”

Button says it’s hard to judge form for the next race at Suzuka.

“It's always very difficult to know because it's such a different circuit to this one but if you compare it to Spa, and it's reasonably similar to Spa — but without the run-off areas — it's a circuit that should suit us pretty well," the McLaren driver said. "I still think that the Red Bulls will be strong as they were in Spa.

“Qualifying was great for us and the race was, as well, but in the race, our pace was no better than the Red Bulls. It's going to be a competitive race, I think. We really don't know where the Ferrari will stand on that type of circuit. It's going to be a competitive race, and one I'm very much looking forward to.”

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.