Button Hampered by Practice Problems

Briton Jenson Button was forced to use an older Renault engine to qualify for Sunday's German Grand Prix following his accident during this morning's practice.

The Briton, who will leave the French squad at the end of the year to move to BAR, lost control of his car and hit the wall after the first corner on the new section of the circuit due to a problem with his engine.

Button missed the second session and then could not use the latest engine spec in qualifying, where he qualified in 13th position.

"After what happened this morning, thirteenth is not too bad," he said. "I want to thank the boys for all their work - they did a great job today. I made a couple of small mistakes on my last run, which meant I couldn't improve my time. The car isn't exactly how I want it, but we haven't had enough running time to solve the problems."

Button was outqualified by his Italian teammate Jarno Trulli, who after a very difficult first day of work at Hockenheim, could recover well to finish in eighth position.

"It was a tough qualifying session for me," admitted the Italian. "The engineers worked hard on the set-up all the way through, particularly for the last two runs when we changed quite a lot on the car. The track got better and better throughout the session, and we had to change the car to suit that.

"We have been struggling a bit this weekend, and eighth is a very good result which should allow us to fight for points tomorrow."