Button rues poor strategic call

Jenson Button admits McLaren got their weather predictions horribly wrong during the Hungarian Grand Prix.

The 34-year-old looked set for a decent points haul at the Hungagoring on Sunday as he was right in the mix following the deployment of a Safety Car after lap eight.

McLaren, though, believed more rain was on the way and they decided to pit Button for another set of intermediates while his team-mate Kevin Magnussen also stayed out on the same tyres.

All the other drivers though changed to slicks and they were proved to be right as the rest of the race was dry.

It meant Button dropped down the order and eventually finished 10th.

“I got up into fifth at the start, which wasn’t a bad position for us. But it went downhill from there. We obviously use different radar to everyone else because on ours the team thought it was going to rain,” he said.

“I feel like I did everything right, and in every track condition, which is why it (the result) is tough.

“I had put the car in a good place, but then we threw it all away.”

McLaren Racing Director Eric Boullier insists the team will move on from their Hungarian nightmare quickly.

“Unfortunately it wasn’t a great afternoon for the team,” he said. “We worked hard to make the most of the tricky conditions at the start of the race – but it didn’t go our way. That’s frustrating, but, equally, that’s racing – it happens sometimes.

“We made the wrong call, but, in such a topsy-turvy race weather-wise, sometimes there are some very narrow margins involved. If things had panned out differently, we may have had a good afternoon – but we don’t dwell on the maybes. We’ll learn from this experience, and we’ll move on.”