Button sums it up: One to forget

Editor 22 Jul 2011 4:55 PM

Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button had nothing good to say about McLaren’s first day of running in Germany after finishing well off the pace…

Neither Lewis Hamilton nor Jenson Button had anything good to say about McLaren’s first day of running in Germany after finishing well of the pace.

Hamilton was the better placed of the McLaren drivers after Friday’s second practice, however, the Brit was still a full second behind the leading Red Bull of Mark Webber.

And he’s not expecting any better on Saturday.

“The fact is we won’t find an answer for tomorrow. We’re down on downforce – we can’t carry the same speed through the corners,” he told the BBC.

“The car is feeling quite good but we can’t go through the corners any faster so we need to refine the set-up to find more downforce.

“The Ferraris and Red Bulls are massively quick. We expect to be just behind them but then in the race anything can happen. But we definitely can’t challenge them for pole.”

Hamilton, though, wasn’t the only McLaren driver who didn’t have a good day at the office.

Jenson Button finished Friday’s action over 1.5s down after his running was cut short due to a problem with new parts for the MP4-26’s exhaust which he was testing.

“One to forget. The set-up today, the problems and the failures – yes it’s not good,” said the 2009 World Champ.

“This morning I couldn’t really get a balance and struggled massively. This afternoon I finally got a good balance with the car and found some rear grip from somewhere and ran on the option tyre and it felt pretty good but all afternoon I haven’t had KERS so for us that’s a lot of lap time from braking and corner exits.

“It wasn’t perfect and then I did one lap on the soft tyre and I had a problem with the exhaust – it’s a test part on the car – and it failed.

“It’s not so much a new exhaust system but a system that has sensors and what have you. It sometimes happens with these parts and it is disappointing that we didn’t get a lot of running.

“We have a lot of work to do on Saturday morning.”