Button blames unusual call for position

The world championship leader will start sixth on the grid for his home race after suffering from a lack of rear-end grip during the session, but, on his final flying lap of Q3, was on course to move up the order.

That was until he received a message from his engineer Andrew Shovlin to abort the run and come into the pits instead, leaving him at the back of the third row - four places behind Brawn team-mate and nearest championship rival Rubens Barrichello.

"My second lap was not a lot quicker, but a bit quicker," Button said. "We could have made up one more place, but my engineer said 'in this lap, in this lap' and as soon as someone says that you react to it and I was off on my timing a little bit.

"It would only have been one position better if I had kept going. I don't know if the team wanted to save more fuel for the race or what, but it was an unusual call."

Button remains optimistic of moving up the order in Sunday's race, even if his car is not to his liking.

"I'm still hopeful we've got the right amount of fuel on board to be competitive with the guys in front and we can have a good race," he added. "But I've really struggled with the car here and I don't know why. It's quite a different car here than the one I had in Turkey."

Team boss Ross Brawn admitted that Button's car needs serious adjustments if it is to give its driver a chance of his seventh victory of the year.

"Jenson was complaining that the balance on the first set of tyres wasn't quite right," Brawn told BBC TV. "We made some adjustments, but I'm not sure it worked.

"I think that with a bit of thought overnight we might be able to make some improvements, because clearly Rubens did pretty well to end up on the front row."