Jenson Button has hailed his ninth place start for the Belgian Grand Prix McLaren's 'best of the season so far' despite having started third in Austria – although that was in part down to various penalties for those ahead.
The Briton eased through both Q1 and Q2 to make the final top-ten shoot-out, securing ninth between the Mercedes-powered Williams cars, just 1.3 seconds down on Nico Rosberg's best time at a circuit which McLaren expected not to do so well at due its long straights.
"I’m very happy with ninth place," he said. "Spa is a tough circuit for our car so I don’t think we expected to get the result we did. You’ve know when you’ve done a good job, and I feel I did just that.
"All in all, I’d say it’s the best qualifying of our season so far."
The 2009 champion is confident McLaren can hold on during the race too, and thanked Honda for the hard work they've done on introducing an upgraded engine this weekend.
"We obviously won’t be near the front, but our race pace should be better than our qualifying pace was so we’ll certainly be competing with the cars that have qualified around us.
"The team have done a great job this weekend, and Honda have brought us a new power unit, so we’re looking at a situation of definite improvement. We didn’t expect to be this far up in qualifying here, so hats off to the whole team; it’s good progress as I say."
