Button seeks positives despite missing much of second practice

Button locked up and only narrowly avoided the wall at Turn 14 just before the session's halfway point. He was initially able to select reverse, but the gear stopped working and Button's car was stranded, forcing him to watch from the sidelines.

While the Briton conceded his lack of long-run experience on the super-soft tyre was a disadvantage, he says he was still able to learn lessons from the session after observing it alongside his engineer.

"It was a short day for me, but it was quite interesting watching other people's times, watching them on the circuit," Button said. "We have a lot of useful information I think.

"We have to take the positives from the session. The negatives were I narrowly missed the barrier and then couldn't drive away because I couldn't get reverse, but the positives are that we were able to watch and see what people are doing in their runs.

"Set-up work we wouldn't have done much more anyway, I think we know which direction we need to go in, but I was disappointed not to get a long run on the super-soft tyre because that's the tyre everyone will struggle with because over-heating of the tyre is very high."

Despite his cool approach, Button did admit he feared cracking the front row would be difficult with the Red Bull looking fast over one lap - while he also said Fernando Alonso's long-run pace gave McLaren cause for concern.

"The front? It's going to be very very tough," Button explained. "The Red Bull is very fast over one lap, and Fernando was up there and his long run was very impressive.

"I think everyone is going to struggle with tyres. The prime is sliding just like the option, and then that causes high temperature, which causes more sliding - you get into a pretty bad situation and there is a massive drop off after just three laps.

"We're not really confident [of the podium] at the moment. There's a few things we still need to sort out and we're not happy with the balance. We have some good ideas for tomorrow though - its only an hour but we'll make some good progress."