Q & A with Jenson Button

Last weekend's French Grand Prix finally brought a smile to Button's face, however, when upgrades fitted to his RA107 lifted the performance of the car and helped him score the team's first point of the year.

Autosport.com caught up with him after the race to find out how happy he was, why the new car is better and whether he is expecting even more from his home race at Silverstone this weekend.

Q: Do you think you showed your genuine pace in the French Grand Prix?

Jenson Button: We knew that we hadn't moved forwards in qualifying but we showed in the race that we had. To finish six seconds behind the quickest Renault and not too far behind the BMWs is a good step forward, definitely. It's something that we can really build on for future races.

Going into the race, I thought there was a possibility for a point but I didn't expect to be so close to those cars. It's a great result for us - it's not where we wanted to end up but it's a step forward, which is what we needed.

Q: How impressed were you by your race pace?

JB: The first two stints I was really struggling with locking the fronts - I think it was just a lack of grip or maybe a lack of downforce. But at really low speed I was locking up the fronts and it was really costing me time. Plus I had massive vibrations on the front.

But as soon as I put the option tyre on in the final stint I had so much grip. I was catching up with (Nick) Heidfeld, the Renault and (Fernando) Alonso. It was a nice stint and an area where we need to work on is the low-speed aerodynamics and the mechanical side of things. But it's a great step forward and a good base for us to work on. It's well deserved for the team.

Q: Does the new car give you a good direction for the second half of the season?

JB: Yeah, in practice this week we thought we'd do pretty well in the race and that we'd beat the Red Bulls in the race. And the Williams just about. But we didn't expect to finish so close to the cars in front of us.

It is a massive base to work from and next weekend in Silverstone we can make another small step forward and hopefully everyone will get excited and we can keep improving from here.

We were 30 seconds behind (Lewis) Hamilton who was third and that's not bad - we're normally about two laps and 30s behind Hamilton. It is nice to get a reasonable result and Silverstone, which is very similar to here, we're hoping for something very similar. High-speed the car seems to be working well, and Silverstone there's a lot of that.

Q: Was it a relief to finally be in the points this season?

JB: It's not really the point that matters. It's just a relief to be driving a car that feels good. It's nice to drive, consistent and a car that I feel is a good starting point for us. The car feels nice and now we need to keep adding downforce to it. It was a great day, and a good weekend. Although I can't believe I'm saying that after finishing eighth.

Q: Does the car now remind you of last year's RA106?

JB: Yeah. We didn't have the best balance - we could have done more to get the balance better. And when we do that we'll make another little step forwards. I was losing out a lot under braking - it was still quite inconsistent under braking on the prime tyres. So that's an area where we need to work on - and which should be easy to fix.

Q: But this must be a good boost before Silverstone?

JB: We've been working on this for seven or eight races. And to get a point and deserve it is a big step forward. We've made some steps but you don't really see it because others have made steps too. But I
think you can see that even though everyone else came to France with a new aero package or whatever, we've made a bigger step than most, which is nice.

Q: Do you feel you are able to extract the maximum from the package?

JB: We had a race with cars that have been on the podium. To end up with the fastest lap on my final lap, it shows that we're looking after the tyres better than before and we can use them. We're looking after them much better which is a huge positive and explains why we've got such good race pace now.