Jenson Button says McLaren 'messed up' in US Grand Prix qualifying

Button will start the race 19th after he caught traffic on his final lap, which he believes was because McLaren got its timing wrong.

"We were eighth yesterday and ninth this morning, so the pace was good," said Button.

"But we just messed up with the timing again - it's not the first time.

"I had to overtake four cars in the last sector and the last one [Jolyon Palmer] saw me really late and stayed on the racing line, so I had to outbrake him into the final corner.

"It's disappointing and it's just certain things that we shouldn't have been making mistakes with.

"We mistimed the lap and got it wrong and it's annoying because we did it two races ago in Malaysia as well.

"It means I'm doing my timed lap when other people are doing their outlap, so we've got to stop doing that because it's costing us a lot.

"You could say 'well how do you know when the pack is going out?' but the other cars seem to be able to do that.

"I thought we had good pace here and we've thrown it away - it's our fault for getting the strategy wrong in terms of timing."

Button attempted his first run in qualifying on the soft tyre, before joining everyone else in taking the super-soft for his final lap, and he admitted that initial strategy gamble was "probably not a good idea".

"We thought we had enough in the bag, with the pace the car had, but it was a tough lap," he added.

"If we judged it right at the end like most of the other cars did, we would have been fine

"Our race pace is fine but the problem is you can't overtake around here, so it's going to be a tough one tomorrow."