Vandoorne bests Jenson Button

Manama : New boy Stoffel Vandoorne confirmed his potential when he qualified 12th for today’s Bahrain Grand Prix.

The 24-year-old Belgian driver, who flew in from Japan on Friday to replace injured two-time champion Spaniard Fernando Alonso, will start two places ahead of his McLaren Honda team-mate Jenson Button, 36, the most experienced man on the grid.

“I think I can be pretty happy after today’s (Saturday) result,” said Vandoorne. “I felt pretty confident in the car and today was all about fine tuning it.

“Free practice was quite good and I knew there was time to come. Qualifying was a close call in Q1, but in Q2 I had a clean lap without mistakes.

“I knew that I had similar pace to Jenson and I knew that, if I could improve it a bit, I could out-qualify him. It is a good feeling, but the most important job is tomorrow and to try to have a good
race.”

For Button, the 2009 champion, it was a disappointing day after he had found promising speed in Friday’s practice sessions.

“I don’t think that same pace was really going to be there today,” he said. “I think others turn up their engines from Friday to Saturday, but we definitely expected to be closer to Q3.”

He added that he felt the car lost its balance late on during qualifying. “The car has been really good all weekend,” he said. “I’ve had a reasonable balance and I was mostly struggling with a bit of under-steer, but was quite happy with it – then, on my last run, for no reason at all, it was completely the opposite and I had massive over-steer.”