• Canadian Grand Prix - Qualifying

Button explains how he missed his qualifying lap

Jenson Button: "I thought ten seconds was enough from the last corner" © Sutton Images

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• Race:
• Canadian Grand Prix

• Drivers:
• Jenson Button

• Teams:
• McLaren

Jenson Button has admitted his McLaren was not quick enough to make the top ten in qualifying for the Canadian Grand Prix, despite his botched final run in Q2.

Button will start 14th after failing to set a competitive time at the end of Q2 when he did not start his lap in time for it to be counted. He missed the opportunity to set a time when he was last in the queue to try to clock a lap following a red flag in Q2.

"I don't think the pace was ever there, but obviously I got it a bit wrong at the end crossing the finish line in time to do another lap, which was a shame," he said. "The team counted me down and I thought ten seconds was enough from the last corner but it wasn't and we were half a second out.

"Sometimes you get lucky with the yellow flags and the red flag but today we got them in the wrong places so we were quite unlucky."

Button said a communication error meant he left the pits at the back of the queue following the red flag at the end of Q2: "We had a radio issue. My engineer was talking to me and then it cut out and I don't think the mechanics heard it initially. That was quite an issue and cost us a lot of time."

Button said Sunday could be another struggle after a gearbox problem limited his long-runs on Friday.

"I didn't do any long running because we had our problem. It's not looking too special but we'll do what we can. Hopefully we'll move forward."

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