Ferrari's Slow Starts Concern Button

The BAR driver has made the most of his improved car this weekend to shine in practice and, although he could manage no better than fifth in first qualifying, he is confident of doing even better in the final session.

But with Ferrari's Bridgestone tyres still appearing to struggle in single lap pace, Button is worried that if he is stuck behind third fastest Schumacher in the opening lap of the race his chances of a strong result could be hugely compromised because he will lose too much time.

"In the race they are going to have a problem with wear, they have at every other race so I don't see why it would change," said Button speaking about Ferrari's chances. "But they are going to be quick.

"The only worry is the Bridgestone won't be working that well on the first lap and at the moment I'm starting behind Michael so that's a bit of a worry. On the first lap if you look at last year they struggled a lot on cold tyres so I'm just hoping they are not in the same situation as it could lose me quite a lot of time."

Button believes that he will have little chance of getting ahead of Schumacher on the grid, although he is hoping to at least snatch fourth place off Williams' Mark Webber in Sunday morning's final qualifying session.

"Hopefully we can make up another place in qualifying tomorrow and maybe get past Webber," explained Button. "It was pretty reasonable. We showed how quick we were in practice.

"Today's gone really well, in practice we are reasonably quick over long runs and reasonably quick over one lap. The only person we can get past would be Webber. I might get Michael but we've got to look at Webber.

"People have had podiums from a lot further down the grid. First you have to finish. I think we can do that, I think we will be very reliable here and maybe other people won't be as it's quite tough on cars here. In the race hopefully we can get a podium finish, there's no reason why we can't."