Jenson Button believes Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri now face "an unbelievable amount of stress" following a disastrous final practice session for the McLaren duo ahead of qualifying for the Las Vegas Grand Prix.
Following a damp start to the hour-long outing, and as track evolution ramped up after the switch to softs, Norris at least showed reasonable pace in his MCL39 on occasion, whilst team-mate and main title rival Piastri was unable to get to grips with the circuit and post a solid lap time.
In the closing stages, with the drivers gaining in confidence and lap times tumbled with the cars in qualifying trim, an apparent electrical issue forced Norris back into the garage, whilst Piastri suffered a telemetry problem that curtailed his running.
It meant Piastri and Norris finished 19th and 20th on the timesheet, three seconds behind pacesetter in Mercedes' George Russell.
As 2009 F1 champion Button noted, it means neither McLaren driver will head into qualifying full of confidence, with the added complication that Q1 is poised to start on a damp track again as rain started to fall just after FP3 concluded.
"It is horrible for both of them, it really is," said Button, speaking on Sky Sports F1. "Whether you're the hunter, or the one being hunted, you know how important every single point is, and every single position in qualifying is. There's an unbelievable amount of stress.
"So it's how you deal with that stress, how comfortable you feel with the car out there on a circuit on which you can't generate any temperature, so it's tricky. The inters are too soft, you can see them sliding around with it, and obviously the dry tyres are too dry for the wet conditions."
Anticipating an intermediate tyre start for qualifying, and what could transpire as the sessions unfold, Button said: "It's how much risk you want to take.
"Everyone's going to be up for taking a risk - apart from the McLaren drivers. It could either go their way or be the complete opposite. It's never going to be in the middle for them.
"It's also not nice going into qualifying like McLaren are. I know they're P 19, P 20, but the reasons are they've got telemetry issues, and it's not nice going into qualifying knowing that they've had those issues prior to it.
"So it's going to be really exciting session. It's still raining here. You can see it under foot now, and it's unbelievably cold. If we see dry tyres, it's going to be people taking a big risk in Q1. I think it'll be more Q2, Q3."
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