• Canadian Grand Prix

Button not writing off Ferrari

ESPNF1 Staff
June 9, 2010 « Virgin hoping to take advantage of a chaotic GP | »
Jenson Button is surprised Ferrari has been off the pace in recent races © Sutton Images
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McLaren's Jenson Button is baffled by Ferrari's drop in performance since the start of the season but is not writing it off yet.

Fernando Alonso won the opening race in Bahrain but, among mistakes and reliability problems, the F10 appears to have dropped off the pace. At the last round in Turkey, Alonso failed to qualify in the top ten and the Ferraris went on to finish way off the pace in seventh and eighth.

Button said he was surprised by Ferrari's recent performances, but said he was not ruling it out of the running just yet.

"It's quite unusual," he told Toronto's The Star. "They had the perfect winter. They were very quick, very consistent and very reliable [in testing] and we were thinking, 'Wow, those guys are going to be untouchable.' At the first race, they were very fast. But we've made steady progress and at the moment we are faster and doing a better job than Ferrari. But they can come back. They're a very strong team, Fernando and Felipe [Massa] have the experience. You can't ever count them out. We never forget them."

However, at this weekend's Canadian Grand Prix he is expecting the main competition to be between his McLaren team and Red Bull.

"There are no high-speed corners at Montreal, they're all low-speed corners, with long straights so our car should work very well here," he said. "You can't forget about Red Bull - they'll still be competitive - but we'll really take the race to them, I think. It's going to be exciting for us."

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