» Is Button already beginning to crack?

McLaren’s Jenson Button lays the blame for his poor qualifying performance firmly at the feet of a ~~lack of talent~~ technical problem encountered by his MP4-25 during his final qualifying run.

The 2009 champion will line up a disappointing 8th at the circuit where he took victory the year before in a Brawn GP Mercedes.

Speaking with the BBC, Button said: "Through qualifying it was getting better and better but then on the last run something was a bit wrong; something felt wrong, so we’re going to have a look at the car now and see what that was. I’m surprised I was eighth, actually, because it was struggling around on the last lap."

Perhaps already feeling the pressure against his team-mate Lewis Hamilton – who qualified an impressive 4th – Jenson used the opportunity to take a cheap shot at his team-mate in relation to the gap of over 1 second to the pole position time of Sebastian Vettel.

Um, shouldn’t you be worrying about your own lack of pace, Jenson?

When you look at the difference in lap time to P1, it’s massive – over one second," Button said. "It’s a big surprise."

For Hamilton, the feeling was – unsurprisingly – quite the opposite.

"We generally don’t have the same pace as the Red Bulls and Ferraris, so I was really surprised when I came through,” Hamilton told the BBC. “I saw that I was P4 but I didn’t know that there were still loads of people behind me.

"I am absolutely overwhelmed with that position – I think it’s great for us, a great starting point – and I hope that tomorrow we can either just keep that or maybe take one more."

When quizzed about the gap to the pole position time, Hamilton said: “I think it’s downforce. We’re generally quite weak in the middle sector – I think we lose almost a second there."

In spite of the famous F-vent? Interesting…

[Original image via AUTOSPORT]