• Hungarian Grand Prix

Button adapting for 2012 Pirellis

Jenson Button expects to be competitive as long as it stays dry in Hungary © Sutton Images

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• Race:
• Hungarian Grand Prix

• Drivers:
• Jenson Button

• Teams:
• McLaren

Jenson Button admits he has had to adapt his driving style in order to try to get the Pirelli tyres to work for him this season.

Button's second place at Hockenheim was his first podium finish since the third race of the season and came after a run of seven points in six grands prix. Speaking ahead of the Hungarian Grand Prix, Button admitted that he was struggling so much with the tyres that McLaren attempted a new approach that hurt his competitiveness for a couple of races.

"I find them very difficult to understand," Button said. "That's why we tried a few new things this year in Canada and Monaco and places like that, because I felt like I needed to find a bit more of a direction with the tyres. But what we tried definitely didn't work, so we reverted back to what we had at the start of the year for Valencia and that's when we started being more competitive - in terms of me within the team being more competitive, not compared to Ferrari and Mercedes and Red Bull and all that but compared to Lewis.

"Then for me the last race was better because I felt that the parts we put on the car worked for us and I think maybe they're getting the tyres to work more in the dry conditions; getting them in their working range and then you play with them like a normal race tyre."

While the updated car appears to be helping matters, Button said he also changed his notoriously smooth driving style in order to keep the tyres in their optimal working range.

"Most of the problem this year has been in and out of the range where they work, and that's the difficulty. You try and drive gentle with them to look after them and they drop out of the range and you end up damaging the tyre more than if you keep them in the range and are aggressive with the tyre. It's been very difficult, especially for me because my style of driving initially didn't suit the tyres - I've had to adapt a little bit - but in the wet it's still tough because we've struggled to get temperature in to the tyres. If the conditions are slightly wrong and slightly too wet for that tyre it doesn't work and then we're four seconds off the pace like we were in Hockenheim.

"If you get the tyre to work and you get the temperature in it like Lewis did in Q2 in Silverstone, he was quickest. So the car - if you get the temperature in the tyre and the tyres working - is good in whatever condition, the problem is if we don't get the temperature we're nowhere. Which is understandable."

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