Defending world champion Jenson Button admitted on Friday that he and the McLaren team face a "tricky" weekend if they are to impress and score good points in Sunday's Hungarian Grand Prix.

The 30-year-old Briton was only able to clock the ninth-fastest time in Friday's opening qualifying, a full 1.6 seconds off the pace set by fastest man Sebastian Vettel of Red Bull.

"It's going to be very tricky," said Button. "The Red Bull is just so fast. They did a 1 minute 20. We didn't get near the low 1 minute 21s.

"The car doesn't feel so good on the softer tyre. On the harder tyre, the car feels good. I don't know where that time is.

"I feel reasonably happy with the balance of the car. There's still more to improve but we're never going to find a second so we'll do the best that we can with what we have here."

Button was four-tenths slower than his team-mate and fellow-Briton Lewis Hamilton, although that was of little consolation to the 2008 champion.

"We're massively down -- almost a second -- in the middle sector, and then a couple of tenths in the first and last sectors," said Hamilton.

"I think the last sector's almost half a second. We are pushing and we're doing the best job we can.

"With the package we have, we're getting around the optimum from it. We're just trying to dial-in the set-up but there's only maybe a couple of tenths in it.

"So we've got a lot of work to do and I guess this weekend's just about scoring as many points as we can and hoping that the guys ahead have troubles. We'll just try and edge out as much as we can."