Jenson Button is confident he is in a good position to take the fight to Fernando Alonso ahead of him at the Spanish Grand Prix on Sunday.
Button qualified fifth, but was just 0.035 seconds off his McLaren team-mate Lewis Hamilton in third, and in the closing stages of Q3 was pipped to fourth by Alonso's Ferrari. But despite missing out on a higher grid position by such a narrow margin, he said he was happy with his performance.
"I felt pretty good out there, the car got better and better through qualifying as we worked with the setup," he told the BBC. "My lap wasn't too bad, I was happy with it. I was 0.035 seconds behind Lewis and obviously disappointed not be third on the grid. Then Fernando got in between us as well. It's so, so close, 0.035 seconds from being third but I'm fifth. I suppose the positive from it is that I'm on the clean side of the grid and that makes quite a big difference."
Button could also be at an advantage because he only used two of the three sets of soft tyres available to him in qualifying, saving a completely fresh set for the race when tyre degradation will be high.
"Having your tyres in good condition makes such a big difference now, even on in-laps you're not pushing as hard," he added. "So the tyres are a big part of the race and I think I'm in pretty good shape. I've got two sets of soft tyres that have done one timed lap and another set that's brand new, so we're in a good position and I think Fernando has used all three sets of his soft tyres which is nice."
But he said race strategy would be dictated by when to use the hard tyres, which is roughly two seconds slower than the soft tyre when new but does not degrade as quickly.
"Obviously we have the prime tyre, which is going to be a tricky tyre in the race - it's a big, big difference from the soft to the hard. You'll see some different strategies tomorrow, but it's difficult to know what to do with the strategy."
© ESPN EMEA Ltd.
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