Formula One news

Button keeping up with pace

Jenson Button was fulfilled inter-team expectations on Friday as the Englishman registered the third fastest time to Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel at the Nürburgring. With Red Bull tipped to again be the quickest team this weekend and the championship leader less than half a tenth slower than Vettel, Button is now looking for more improvements.

Red Bull Racing has outscored Brawn GP in both the Turkish and British Grands Prix and Button is aware that consistency is vital in order to stay in contention for this year's World Championship, with more races still to go than the amount to have already taken place.

"We had a reasonable day and were able to make good progress on the setup of the car," said Jenson, who finished afternoon practice just 38 thousandths of a second down on German Vettel, who drives at home as Button did at Silverstone. "We are still lacking in a few areas that we need to look at overnight and make improvements to but, overall, today was a pretty good start to the weekend.

Button's tried out Mercedes power of a different era at Goodwood last Sunday

"The main problem is the cold conditions - the air temperature is almost what you would expect in winter testing and the low track temperatures are causing problems with the harder 'Prime' tyre (hardest compound on offer at a Grand Prix weekend - this weekend being Medium - and identified by the lack of a green stripe) so we will struggle with that tyre if it stays like this."

"It looks like this will be another cold race weekend but the car and tyres have a different feeling here from the last race at Silverstone," added team-mate Rubens Barrichello, who wound up seventh. "The harder tyre is really quite tricky and it was difficult to maintain its working range today. We've made some improvements this afternoon but still have some way to go on the setup, particularly with the front end of the car where we were lacking grip all day."

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