The champion McLaren duo of Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton were both left frustrated after a disappointing opening qualifying session of the season for the team, with the British duo bemoaning the lack of pace of their MP4-25 package.
McLaren had been one of the pre-season pacesetters, and seemed to have carried that speed over to Bahrain after a promising Friday practice, but their competitiveness plummeted on Saturday and the pair will line up 4th and 8th on the grid for Hamilton and Button respectively.
Hamilton tried to put a brave face on the situation, suggesting to the BBC after the session that he had been "surprised" to get as good a result as 4th.
"I was actually surprised with that result," Hamilton shrugged, "We generally don't have the same pace as the Red Bulls and the Ferraris so I was really surprised when I came through.
"I saw that I was P4 but I didn't know that there was loads of people behind me. I am absolutely overwhelmed with that position, I think that's great for us, a great starting point and I hope tomorrow we can just either keep that position or take one more tomorrow."
He added that although it was good to start a season more competitively than his dreadful form in early 2009, the car was still missing downforce compared to its rivals. A similar issue hampered the 2009 car in the first half of the season.
"I think it is downforce," he said when asked to pinpoint the issues with the car, "We are generally quite weak in the middle sector [at Bahrain], I think we lose almost a second there.
"We have got a lot of downforce to find, but I know the guys back at the factory are pushing very hard, and this is much better position to start from than we did last year so I can only be grateful and just keep working with the guys to push us forward."
Meanwhile, Jenson Button was disappointed with 8th place, despite only just scraping through to the final top ten shootout with a last-gasp run in Q2. He suggested that "something was wrong" with his car to explain away his lack of pace, and refused to clarify whether he meant the driver.
"It was getting better every run I did and I was getting more comfortable with the car," Button said at the end of the session, "I really struggled with the fronts locking this afternoon – very different to this morning.
"Through quali it was getting better and better and then in the last run something was a bit wrong. Something felt wrong, so we are going to have a look at the car now and see what that is. I'm surprised I was eighth actually because it was struggling around the last lap."
He added that he had been a bit shocked to be so far behind the top three on the grid.
"Lewis is up in fourth which is not such a bad position, but when you look at the difference in lap time to P1 it's massive – over one second – so it's a big surprise," he gashed.
"I think Red Bull are very, very fast and even the Ferraris couldn't stay with them in qualifying."
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