• Brazilian Grand Prix - FP2

Button explains wing difference

Jenson Button ran a smaller rear wing than Lewis Hamilton on Friday afternoon © Sutton Images

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• Report:
• Hamilton tops Friday practice ahead of Vettel
  

• Race:
• Brazilian Grand Prix

• Drivers:
• Jenson Button

• Teams:
• McLaren

Jenson Button said his one-lap pace was hurt by a low downforce rear wing comparison he was running during Friday practice.

While team-mate Lewis Hamilton topped the both practice sessions, Button went from being less than 0.1s off the pace in FP1 to over 0.8s slower in the second session as he ran a rear wing with less downforce. Button said the results were "surprisingly good" on high fuel but cost him time over one flying lap.

"We were running a lower downforce set-up package to Lewis this afternoon," Button said. "It was quite an interesting comparison, but, in the hot weather, lower downforce makes things trickier because the car slides more, which hurts the tyres.

"Still, it was a useful test, because we needed to see how well the smaller rear wing works. Obviously, it operates in a different way [from the higher-downforce set-up package], so we wanted to be able to understand that. Using the smaller rear wing, our long-run pace was surprisingly good. However, our single-lap pace wasn't as strong - probably because we weren't able to use DRS as fully as we could with the bigger wing."

Team principal Martin Whitmarsh said Button would be reverting to Hamilton's rear wing set-up from FP3 onwards.

"I think Lewis had the right set-up today," Whitmarsh said. "We tried something on Jenson's car which once you're in to it for the second session you couldn't go back because the gear ratios were fixed for that. So we got some good data but nothing that really helps Jenson for this weekend."

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