Button gutted by slump

Button ran in a comfortable second early on, but slipped behind both Ferraris as the race unfolded. He eventually had to fend off a late attack from the Williams of Juan Pablo Montoya.

"Five points are very important but I'm obviously disappointed that I'm not on the podium here because that's what we felt was achievable," said Button. "I got a reasonably good start and managed to keep the Renaults behind me but I had oversteer all the way through the first stint. We changed the car at the first stop to give more understeer, which helped the balance slightly, but we couldn't make a big enough adjustment and we had low grip throughout the race.

"I bogged down at the second pitstop after the anti-stall kicked in as I released the clutch. Our pace was disappointing compared to the Ferraris and we certainly didn't expect to be behind a Williams today. I guess we just have to look at what went wrong and fix it for Indianapolis."

Team principal David Richards said: "The reality is that we just didn't have the pace on the day. It is fair to say that Jenson extracted the maximum possible performance from the car, so to generate five more points and close the gap to second place is satisfactory."