• Monaco Grand Prix

Monaco our best shot at pole - Button

Jenson Button: "We need to put Sebastian under a bit of pressure" © Sutton Images

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• Race:
• Monaco Grand Prix

• Championship:
• FIA Formula One World Championship

• Drivers:
• Jenson Button

• Teams:
• McLaren

Jenson Button reckons Monaco will be McLaren's best opportunity to out-qualify the dominant Red Bulls over the next few races.

A Red Bull has been on pole position at every race this season and at the last round in Spain Mark Webber was nearly one second faster than the McLarens. Button reckons the key to Red Bull's one-lap supremacy is downforce and can't see McLaren closing that gap any time soon.

"If you look at the difference in pace in qualifying you'd say the difference in lap time is probably about 30 points of downforce," he told journalists in the Vodafone McLaren Mercedes phone-in. "You're not going find that for probably six or seven races. So it's a difficult one in qualifying. I can't see us, in the near future, beating them in qualifying. Unless it's a very unusual circumstance, maybe like Monaco."

But despite the huge gap in qualifying, the McLaren appears to be much closer in race trim, with Lewis Hamilton finishing 0.6 seconds of Vettel at the chequered flag in Barcelona.

Asked if he understood why the McLaren was so much closer over a long run than in qualifying, Button said: "No, not really, I don't think any of us know. We think they have a lot more downforce than us, but then we don't understand why they don't have that pace in the race. It's a tough one.

"Maybe their car is not so good on tyres, they degrade quicker, maybe, on their car, I don't know. In a few of the races this year we've been able to race them, but in qualifying we've been a long way off. So I don't know."

Red Bull's Sebastian Vettel is again the favourite to take victory at Sunday's race after winning four of the first five races this season. Button expects the championship leader will be strong this weekend and said the best chance for everyone else would be if Vettel's team-mate Mark Webber puts the pressure on.

"Sebastian's been around for a couple of years now and he's been very quick around Monaco," Button added. "Mark [Webber] did beat him in qualifying last year and he also had better race pace than Sebastian, but I don't think it's a bad circuit for Sebastian. I think he'll be competitive.

"But you might see Mark challenging him more than previous races which is exactly what we need, to put Sebastian under a bit of pressure. We never know what's going to happen when he's under pressure. Hopefully he'll make some mistakes."

In the last two races Button has opted for one less pit stop than the other front running cars; a decision that helped him reach the podium in Spain after a bad start. For Monaco, Pirelli has brought its supersoft compound tyres and Button said his team would again figure out the strategy as the weekend progresses.

"Obviously the strategy is very up in the air at the moment and we won't really know what we're doing until we get into the race and understand the tyres a bit more," he said. "Because people are really changing their strategies over the race distance. I think most cars were look at three stops in Barcelona but ended up on a four.

"So it's changing all the time and looking after your tyres is important but there are also areas in the race where you have to push the tyres very, very hard to make a difference. So it's a difficult balance and we're still learning."

© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.