No great British hope for Button

The British Grand Prix is the next event on the F1 calendar but Jenson Button isn't holding out a great deal of hope for success at his home race. Former British champ Damon Hill may have been talking up Button's chances for Silverstone glory recently but the Honda driver himself is finding it a hard job to be optimistic.

Jenson Button.

Photo by xpb.cc.

Button struggled in Monaco, qualifying a lowly 13th and finishing only marginally better in 11th, and he apparently doesn't expect any big steps in competitiveness any time soon. "The car isn't quick enough to challenge the top teams," he said, according to the BBC.

"We don't expect to be fourth place from here on out because we know we have a lot of work to do on the car if we are to do that." He added that testing this week was not going to be enough to get up to speed. "I don't think all our problems will be solved. We are not going to be challenging the Renaults, the McLarens or the Ferraris."

Button had problems with his tyres in Monaco, something that Honda had suffered with all through the early season. "It was hard for me to do anything with the car," he remarked. "I had to stop a lot earlier than I wanted because the tyres were worn out. I took lots of front wing off at the stop and the car was much better but this was a race to forget for me."

In contrast, teammate Rubens Barrichello seems to be fining his feet with Honda and finished fourth despite a drive through penalty for speeding in the pit lane. However, the Brazilian wasn't really happy with the result, his best so far this season.

"I'm disappointed because I was looking good for third," Barrichello said. "It was a tough race and I didn't feel competitive at all. I was carrying a lot of fuel but I did a good job to keep pace because I was really struggling with the balance of the car."

So no matter what the result, the drivers don't seem to have a lot of good to say about the car at the moment. Honda was expected to be a title challenger this season but so far is 21 points behind third placed McLaren in the constructors' standings and over 60 points down on leaders Renault.