Button: “Tomorrow you will see the real McLaren”

Jenson Button is disappointed with his sixth place on the grid at the German GP and is convinced that McLaren's race pace is far superior to what it managed to show in the wet in qualifying at Hockenheim, even aiming for the podium in the race.

If Button and teammate Lewis Hamilton finished in seventh and eighth place, they will both recover a position thanks to Mark Webber's move back. But the crucial point is that the English team seems to be doing very well with the dry tires and instead is struggling terribly to find the operating window for the wet ones. “I am absolutely convinced that we should aim for a podium and I think it wouldn't be wrong to aim even higher, in dry conditions we have made some good improvements to the car aerodynamically and mechanically while it is precisely in the wet where we struggle with the tire temperature”, Button said. “The car seems perfect in dry conditions and I did a lot of laps with a full tank of fuel, so we have a lot of information about our behavior at the start of the race. Yesterday we did three long runs and today I did two, so I feel like we are ready to do well, more than anyone else.", added the Briton.

Despite his optimism for the race Button says he is still unable to understand why it is not possible to make the tires work in wet conditions. “The rain tire doesn't work, and this applies to both the Intermediates and the Full Wets: the wheels spin and you risk going off the track on every lap. Our Qualifying wasn't really great, we were struggling with the same problems we've always had in these conditions. I've been driving F1 cars for 12 or 13 years, I know how to drive in the wet and I can say that the car doesn't work in these conditions.", concluded the 2009 world champion.

Lorena Bianchi