Button happy despite missing Q3

The Honda driver lapped 0.068 seconds shy of the Q3 cut-off time on the way to 11th place.

"I'm happy with P11 and to be starting on the right side of the grid for the race," Button said.

"The weather was looking changeable with the risk of rain, so we ran early in both sessions to get a banker time in. My final run in the second session was on the option tyres and I'm really happy with the lap as we just missed out on going through by less than 0.1 seconds."

Button said he had been struggling with the softer tyres until track conditions improved.

"The main challenge was choosing between the prime and the option tyre," he said.

"I was struggling to get the options to work so I was running on the primes for most of the session but pretty much everyone else was on the option tyre.

"So with that much option rubber going down on the track, we had to give it a go for my last run in Q2, and we were 0.25 seconds quicker. That was as quick as the car is today and I put in a good lap, so I'm pleased with our position."

Teammate Rubens Barrichello will start 14th, and felt the loss of some practice time to a gearbox fault had been costly.

"It was unfortunate that we had a problem this morning with the gear selection which limited my running and therefore when you go into qualifying, you are playing catch-up all the time," he said.

"However it was a good effort this afternoon and I'm happy with how our session developed to eventually finish in 14th position. It would have been nice to have more time this morning to set the car up a little better but we made the best of a difficult situation."