Interrupted day for Button after eye irritation

McLaren showed promising pace in Germany after its strong performance in Hungary. The team’s British driver Button, however, experienced a very unpleasant incident which forced him to abandon his FP2 running and visit the track’s medical centre.

Jenson was driving in the pit lane when a foreign body flew into his eye. He had so much irritation that he had to give up any further running and went to check his eyes into the medical centre.

A foreign body was found in his eye which had to be washed out.

“I was driving down the pit straight when I got something in my eye.”

“It wasn’t stuck in my eye, but it was a foreign body, which the hospital washed out and removed. It scratched my eye, so I’ve been given some eyedrops – but all is good.”

”I don’t know what it was – maybe a piece of carbon dust, which has happened to me before.”

Asked about how the sessions went for McLaren, Button sounded confident when he declared his targets. The former world champion wants McLaren to be the fastest behind the three most competitive cars.

“The session was okay – the car didn’t feel too bad at all – but I had to stop early because of the problem. The aim for the remainder of the weekend is to be up there behind the top three teams.”

Alonso celebrated his birthday on Friday and his reward was a competitive car on a track which does not really suits the characteristics of his McLaren-Honda.

“It was a nice way to celebrate my birthday here with the team – we spend 200 days a year alongside each other, so that was a fantastic feeling,” Alonso sounded happy.

Alonso posted competitive times right in the first practice session and was pretty quick in the afternoon as well. However, he feels some changes have to be made for FP3 as McLaren hasn’t nailed completely the setup yet.

“I now need to focus on the weekend and help improve our pace a little. We felt competitive straight away in the first session – more than in the second, where we lost some performance.”

”But we might need to go back on some set-up changes and find a way to improve the car for tomorrow.

The two-time champion wants to be ‘best of the rest’ which won’t be so straightforward as it was in Budapest a week ago.

“For this weekend, we need to be realistic: there are three teams that are a little bit quicker than everyone else, then, behind them, there’s a close fight.”

“If we want to beat our direct competitors, we need to get everything right – but that’s likely to prove a little more difficult than it did in Hungary,” added Alonso.