Jenson Button Q&A
Magny-Cours was not the most enjoyable weekend for BAR and for Jenson Button in particular. Both Jenson and Jacques Villeneuve lost all of Friday morning due to a legal dispute which kept the cars off the track, and they thus had to enter first qualifying with no knowledge of the new corners at the end of the lap. Then the Brit lost most of Saturday after suffering a blown engine. In the race itself he ran with Jacques until a problem in his pit stop saw him leave with rather less in the tank than he had bargained for, which led to an embarrassing crawl to a halt shortly afterwards. Adam Cooper spoke to him after the race.
"There have been a lot of bad points really, but running out of fuel was probably the worst one! We had a fuel rig problem, and we didn't get fuel in when we thought we did, and we didn't find out until just before the car stopped. That was a bit of an issue."
"They did know, but the problem was Jacques was coming in the next lap, so it was a bit hectic at the time. So that was disappointing. But anyway, we would have only finished ninth or 10th, which was where Jacques was. The only person I was really racing with was Jacques. We had a good fight on a few occasions into the hairpin - I dragged down the outside of him, but he was blocking pretty well. It was good fun, but that's about it. It's all we're capable of at the moment."
"It was frustrating, but we couldn't do anything about it. We just had to wait for it to be sorted out. And also the problem on Saturday didn't help, the engine failure, so I didn't get any running then. All round it's been a pretty tough weekend, but even so I don't think we're on the pace to be high up the points really. In the drivers' championship I've been overtaken by Webber now, which isn't great, and Jaguar are only one point behind us, so we need to push on a little bit more."
"It is, because up until Monaco we were very quick, and we seemed to be improving every race, and suddenly on the last three circuits it just hasn't worked for us. The problem is the balance is very good, but there's low grip, so you're just skating around."
"I enjoy it a lot, it's just a bit of a pain going there knowing that we're not going to be qualifying in the top six or seven. Things might change in the test at Barcelona, but we're not where we should be at the moment."
"There are new things, and we're testing tyres as well, so hopefully that will be an improvement."
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