Jenson Button blames his eighth place finish to poor timing at Valencia – Formula 1 news
Jenson Button has blamed his eighth place finish on his bad luck at the European Grand Prix.
Winner of the Australian Grand Prix, Button has had a tough couple of races and is struggling to make an impact. He said that the timing of this pit stops resulted in a lower finishing position than he deserved at Valencia.
Button went with the two-stop strategy that worked well for other teams. Mercedes used the same strategy and both their drivers did well at the race. Lewis Hamilton was also on a two-stop strategy although he could not finish his race and after his retirements
did admit that he was not very confident of a good result in the race when he retired because of the heavy degradation on his tyres.
Button earlier had trouble with the Pirelli compounds and was not able to match the pace that his teammate had.
Button added that he was not happy with the eighth-place finish but defended the teams two stop-strategy. It was not the strategy that disallowed him a better position rather the timing of the stops that caused the problem according to the Brit.
“I don't think you're ever going to be happy with four points,” he said after the race. “But it was a pretty unusual race for Valencia - it was obviously my comments yesterday about it not being a very exciting place to race!”
He said that he had a good start in the race but was boxed at turn one and had to lift to prevent colliding with Fernando Alonso and the wall at turn two.
He added, “I don't think we did a bad job in terms of strategy - the car felt good and kept improving during the race - but, when the Safety Car was deployed, I think a few others lucked in to a better strategy. And, today, also, we just didn't get lucky.”
It will be interesting to see how Button copes with the pressure he is finding himself in after a few bad results in recent Grands Prix. Next stop is Silverstone and he will be gunning to do well in front of his home crowd.
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