Japanese GP: Jenson Button says he was on limit of McLaren's pace

Jenson Button believes his 10th place in qualifying for the Japanese Grand Prix represents the McLaren's maximum potential at Suzuka

Button said he while he was pleased to have made it into Q3, his consistency over qualifying proved he could not have extracted more from his car.

"That's as quick as the car will go; I couldn't go any quicker than that," Button said.

"I did three laps of 1m31.8s, a quarter of a tenth between all of them. That's the limit and I couldn't find anything else out there.

"At least we got the maximum out of it [the car] and I don't think we could have done any more with the set-up.

"It's tough that's only tenth but we are where we are. The car feels good, we're just not quick enough."

Team-mate Sergio Perez, who narrowly missed the Q3 cut, said his crash in Friday practice had put him on the back foot heading into qualifying.

"Obviously with the accident yesterday we lost a lot of track time, so today we had to recover with some set-up changes," he said.

"In the end we missed by just half a tenth - we were extremely close to making Q3.

"Not ideal, but on the other hand I think we're in a good position in tomorrow to score points."