'Shocked' Button looks to future

But the Briton believes his team must not just sit back and write off this season. He thinks the only way to improve the situation for 2007 is to arrest their decline now.

"I am confident things are going to change," said Button at the German Grand Prix. "I am in a good position and with a team that I can fight for the world championship in the future, but it has been tough this year. It's been a very disappointing season.

"But now we have to put that behind us and look to the future. We need to see improvements in the last seven races this season because we can take that momentum into next season.

"It should be a lot better here than the last race. I don't want to talk up our chances too much but we should be in the points here.

"To have a good year next year, we need to start improving now and we need to be scoring points regularly. It would be fantastic if we could challenge for the podium this season."

Button had gone into the year confident of challenging for wins, and even feeling he had an outside chance of the world championship.

But despite a podium finish in the Malaysian Grand Prix, and several strong qualifying performances early on, his season has gone into freefall.

At the French Grand Prix two weeks ago he failed to make it past the first round of qualifying for the second time this year.

Button admits that the disappointment of the year has been harder to take because of the high hopes that Honda had early on.

"This year we were shocked after a few races how far we had fallen behind the leading teams," he said. "We thought we'd be challenging for wins at every race.

"But as soon as we looked at the season and everyone started improving their cars at a very fast rate we weren't able to match that, which is why we've dropped off.

"But we know where we are lacking and where we need to improve. It just takes time to achieve that. Hopefully it will be sooner rather than later.

"It has been a very tough season. When you think you are going to achieve so much and it doesn't happen it makes it even tougher.

"That's when it hits home, when it doesn't happen. This is my seventh year and I really thought it was going to happen this year for me."