McLaren Mercedes
Jenson Button believes that a communication error with his McLaren team over the timing of their final stop potentially cost him a chance of finishing on the podium at the Brazilian Grand Prix.
Button ended the race in fourth but had been trailing Williams's Felipe Massa for much of the event and felt that a miscommunication hurt his challenge.
"Judging the race was so tricky today. I pushed really hard on my first stint on the Prime [tyres] so as to maintain the gap to Valtteri [Bottas]," he said.
"That meant I destroyed my rear tyres – but I reasoned that, if I could keep using DRS, I could establish a gap to the guys behind me. It was worth it, and it worked, but it meant I had to back off during the following stint to look after my tyres.
"It all went pretty smoothly until my final pit-stop – there was a bit of miscommunication about stopping, which meant I ended up doing an extra lap. That could have cost us a chance of the podium. It’s a shame we couldn’t hang on to Felipe, but it was still a fantastic race.
"I really enjoyed it. One of the best aspects of it was my great fight with Kimi [Raikkonen] – you always push to the limit with him, but you never go over it – so I enjoyed that very much."
Team-mate Kevin Magnussen was a ninth in the sister McLaren.
"That wasn’t a great race for me, which is disappointing," he admitted. "I had a lot of tyre degradation – I tried my best to take care of my tyres but it just didn’t seem possible today.
"I tried to keep people from getting past me, but guys like Fernando [Alonso] and Nico [Hulkenberg] just had more pace than I did, so it wasn’t possible. We need to sit down and have a look at why it didn’t go right for me today – I’m sure we can find the answer."
