Button blown away

"We weren't able to get many laps in during practice this morning," he said, "but the car was working quite well then nonetheless. We had the 15-minute warm-up when the wind picked up and it felt like a completely different car to drive in qualifying - very twitchy."

Jenson clearly felt he had room for improvement, after running an impressive second quickest in morning practice, but remained positive despite being beaten in the one-lap shootout by his new team-mate Jacques Villeneuve.

"It wasn't a great lap and like everyone else there was room for improvement," he said. "It's difficult to know where we stand compared with everybody else but I'm pretty happy with eighth position. It's a good place to be starting the first race of the season."

Villeneuve was similarly disappointed in his flying lap, but no reoccurrence of the engine problem suffered in practice has raised his hopes for the race. "I'm just disappointed with my lap because it wasn't very special," he said. "After this morning's practice, reliability will be a bit of a worry but we can still fight for the podium so that's what we have to try and do. We're still looking good for tomorrow."