McLaren driver Jenson Button believes that the Woking team will be able to challenge in the Brazilian Grand Prix, after securing his best qualifying performance at the Interlagos track in six years with third place on the grid.
Button finished as the best-placed driver for Red Bull's rivals, outqualifying team mate Lewis Hamilton to take third behind Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber.The result represented his best qualifying performance at the track since 2005, even counting his title-winning year in 2009 when he had to fight through from 14th on the grid.
And after the session, Button suggested that he was now "excited" for the race, saying that he was ready to take the fight to the Red Bulls ahead of him.
"I'm excited about tomorrow; it's the last race of year and I want to end it on a high," he grinned in the post-qualifying press conference.
He went on: "I am enjoying this moment, this is my best qualifying for six years [at Interlagos]. I always love racing here; it's such a good circuit for racing and fighting.
"Out of last corner into Turn 1 is good for overtaking, and now we have DRS out of Turn 3, hopefully I can get [Vettel and Webber] tomorrow."
He also said that he was hoping for a strong performance to end a "great" season for himself and the McLaren team.
"Whatever happens, it has been a great season for us, but just not quite good enough," he mused, "There are some areas we still have to work on, but hopefully we can have a good race tomorrow."
His team mate Lewis Hamilton, who qualified alongside him in fourth place, admitted that Button had been "massively quick" in the session.
And the British driver said that he was now pinning his hopes on a wet race, saying that some rain represented the McLaren team's best chance of a win.
"Jenson was massively quick today. I ended up a couple of tenths away from him, so clearly I could have gone a bit faster, but the fact is that although I didn't make any mistakes on my best lap I just wasn't quite quick enough on the day," he rambled.
"While that's inevitably a little disappointing for me personally, Jenson's pace is very encouraging for the team."
He went on: "We have reason to be optimistic about tomorrow too: we're both on the second row, and we can definitely mount a strong challenge from there.
"I don't think we're quite there in terms of race pace in the dry, but hopefully we'll be there if it's wet.
"Whatever happens though, it's going to be a tough, long race; and if the weather is wet or changeable, as predicted, then it's going to be very interesting indeed."
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