Button rues Q3 tyre strategy

The championship leader was also frustrated with having been blocked by Ferrari's Felipe Massa at the start of the final qualifying segment.

"The car in Q1 felt pretty good on the harder tyres but we didn't run them in Q3 so a little bit of a shame really," Button told TV crews in Monaco.

"I think maybe that was a better option. We ran on the softer tyre like everyone else and I struggled on it - a lot of movement in high speed at the rear and a lot of understeer at low speed apex. Didn't feel great.

"I don't think Lewis [Hamilton] is particularly that happy either, he's fifth and I'm eighth, so I'm obviously a long way back but even so it's a bit frustrating. The car didn't feel that great in qualifying on the soft tyres so it's a pity we chose to go that direction."

Button's incident with Massa came at the end of his first flying lap in Q3, when he encountered the Ferrari going into the final corner and had to slow down, while Massa then accelerated away to start his own first run.

"I had so much space and I don't know what he was thinking," said Button. "There are only 10 cars out there in Q3 so it should be easy to keep out of the way of cars coming round, but he obviously wasn't looking in his mirrors and it was right at the end of a timed lap as well - it was my first timed lap of the session.

"Very annoying. I don't know what the lap time would have been but very annoying that he got in the way because it was blatantly slowing me down."