Light drizzle started falling just minutes before the start of qualifying,
guaranteeing fireworks once the action got underway. And so it proved.
Jenson Button was nearly caught out in Q1, leaving it late to set a decent lap
in his McLaren, but fellow Briton Paul di Resta was not so lucky, exiting in
Q1 for a second successive race.
The Scot then chose to lash out at his team, blaming them for making him sit
for too long on the garage.
“We spent far too much time trying to fix a problem when the conditions
were good when the car could have run – it’s the fault of the team again,”
he said. “It’s just not good enough.”
Lotus’ Romain Grosjean was another big-name casualty of Q1 and is likely to
start from the pit-lane today as his 10-place grid penalty, carried over
from Monaco where he crashed into a Toro Rosso, meant he would have started
from the back of the field anyway.
Q2 was even more lively, Felipe Massa braking on the white line and shunting
his Ferrari side-on into the barriers, just as he did in Monaco a fortnight
ago, to bring out a red flag with two minutes of the session remaining.
That ensured a mad scramble for position when the pitlane opened again, with
drivers struggling to find some clear track and at the same time to get some
heat into their tyres.
Button was unable to do so and will start today’s race from 14th place. The
2009 world champion will be praying for a bit of rain-induced chaos, as
there was for his epic, four-hour victory here two years ago, but it is
symptomatic of his luck that after three days of doom and gloom in Montreal
the forecast is set to clear up for race day.
Perhaps Button will have spent last night revisiting the footage of 2011 for
inspiration, as he admitted this week to doing from time to time. “I do
actually [watch the race for motivation],” he said.
“There is also a bit of footage that my mum sent to me. It was filmed in
a sports bar in the UK and when I overtake Vettel the place just erupts. It
is amazing to see. It does feel really nice because you don’t see that ever,
you don’t hear the crowd and you don’t see that kind of excitement.
“You are in your own world really when you cross the finish line and it
is nice to see people enjoying it as much as you do. It is a once-in
a-lifetime race really, you can’t see that happening again.
If it did- wow. It would be a very special feeling but I am not expecting a
race like to happen again.
“It was pretty amazing but I don’t know about [it being my] best,”
he said. “There are different ways to win a race and we ended up last
twice, had five pit stops, a drive-through penalty, a broken front wing, a
puncture, a crash with my team mate and another one with another world
champion (Fernando Alonso). So it was a pretty interesting race.
“But then you have also got the races that you dominate like Spa last
year. That race was pretty special to me on a circuit that I love. But the
emotion and the adrenalin were through the roof here because it all came
down to that last lap. I have watched it back, quite a few times. It’s great.”
Listening to Button reminisce felt rather poignant given the current state of
affairs at McLaren who are already as good as out of both championships this
season and admitted this week that 2014 could prove tricky given they will
be in the last year of their engine partnership with Mercedes before
switching to Honda power.
The Japanese manufacturer’s slogan is The Power of Dreams, and they may be all
Button has of adding a second world title before he retires.