Jenson Button has admitted he must rediscover his qualifying touch after his poor Saturday form contributed to another dismal race in Monaco.
Disappointed Jenson says his race was one big frustration
Jenson Button has admitted he must start qualifying better after his recent run of poor results continued in Monaco, resulting in him losing further touch in the Drivers' Championship.
For the second successive race weekend the McLaren driver had failed to make Q3 on Saturday and therefore started right in the midfield pack which on this occasion proved costly as he was caught up in the Romain Grosjean-triggered carnage at the first corner and had to take avoiding action to steer clear of Kamui Kobayashi, whose Sauber was launched into the air.
From there Button failed to make much headway on the most difficult F1 circuit to pass of them all with his hopes of a points finish all-but scuppered when his team failed to get him past the Caterham of Heikki Kovalainen at the sole pit stop phase.
Button continued to find himself bottled up behind the slower car and with eight laps to go his frustration appeared to boil over as an over-ambitious overtaking lunge coming out of the Swimming Pool section saw him tag his rival into a spin and damage his own car, forcing him into his second retirement of the season.
"It wasn't really a fight with Kovalainen," a clearly downbeat Button told
Sky Sports F1 after the race. "If you place your car in the right place you can't overtake and he kept doing that. It's impossible.
"It's quite frustrating when you're so much quicker and you can't overtake. Anyway, game over - at least I didn't have to do the last eight laps, that's one way of looking at it, and feel pain for even longer.
"But it's over now and we can look forward to qualifying better and then not getting unlucky. We were very unlucky at the start and that's what dropped me down so far. So, yeah, tough weekend."
Button had struggled with his balance on his MP4-27 for several races prior to his arrival in Monaco but appeared happier with the car after topping Thursday's second practice session.
But come Saturday afternoon, the 32-year-old says the handling went awry again and that it was now pivotal that he and his race engineers found a solution to the problem.
"I've got to be quicker in qualifying," Button conceded.
"To do that I need to find a balance that I like with the car and just try and find a consistent car really because at the start of the week it seems good and qualifying it's not.
"So hopefully we can find out why."
