Jenson Button reckons he wasted a perfectly good set of tyres by even bothering to run in Saturday's final qualifying segment.
On the back foot and off the pace after missing a large part of Friday's running with a hydraulic leak, Button only just made it into Q3 and would have dropped out if Pastor Maldonado had stayed on track instead of putting his Williams into the wall.
In the final segment, which decides the front row of the grid, Button again lacked pace and qualified down in tenth place having opted to run on the harder compound Pirellis.
However, if the Brit had sat out the session entirely, he would have still been tenth - and could have started on the harder tyres anyway.
"We wanted to start the race on the prime tyre, and looking at it now we shouldn't have bothered running it," Button said.
"It was going to be tricky to beat anyone on the prime tyre, and we had no new options left. We were going to be P10 on an (old) option tyre, so we thought we'd give it a go on a prime and start the race on a prime.
"Maybe we shouldn't have put five laps on it. But you get in the car and you want to go out and see what you can do with the tyre, and that's exactly what we did."
The Brit, though, is refusing to give up on securing a solid result come Sunday's grand prix as last season he claimed the victory in Canada.
"I think today wasn't great. Maybe as I said we shouldn't have put laps on the prime tyre, because now we have five laps on the tyre starting the race, and the guys behind me have brand new tyres.
"It's not the best way to start tomorrow, but it's going to be a hot race, and I think it's probably going to be the hottest race we've had this year.
"It will hopefully throw up a few surprises for everyone, and we can still have a good afternoon."
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