Barcelona: Jenson Button spoke of his relief on Friday after anxious hours testing his Formula One car without knowing whether his girlfriend was safe in earthquake-hit Japan.
Button, the 2009 world champion, said he tried in vain to contact Japanese-Argentine lingerie model Jessica Michibata before she sent out a reassuring message on her Twitter feed hours later.
"I couldn't speak to the missus, to Jessie, because the phone lines weren't working in Japan," said the McLaren driver after wrapping up his final day of testing before the season-opener in Australia on March 27.
"The only way I could get in touch with her really was through Twitter because the telephone lines weren't working. I found out that she was okay.
"She sent me a text saying: 'How's testing going?" and it was like: 'Honey, that's not really the most important thing at the moment. How are you? How are you feeling?'"
Button, who has been dating Michibata for some three years, said the model had been doing a photoshoot in an underground studio in Tokyo when the biggest quake on record in Japan struck.
At least 1,000 people died when the 8.9 magnitude earthquake triggered a devastating tsunami along the country's northeastern coast.
McLaren, well off the pace of rivals Red Bull and Ferrari in testing, had another disappointing day at the Circuit de Catalunya but Button's thoughts were mainly elsewhere.
"My heart and thoughts go out to all of the people (in Japan) because motorsport is one thing but something like that happening is so much bigger than the problems that we have here today," he said.
"I'm not going to lie. It's not the best way to go into the season," he said after completing 57 laps and ending up 13th of the 14 drivers on the timesheets.
Seven-time world champion Michael Schumacher was fastest in a morale-boosting turnaround for Mercedes while Ferrari's Fernando Alonso completed a whopping 141 laps in front of his home fans and was second fastest.
"You look at Red Bull's mileage and Ferrari's mileage and we are a long way down on it but there is no point getting negative about it and down at this point of the season," said Button.
"We've got to pick ourselves up, be positive, sort the problems out and turn up in Melbourne hopefully with a much more reliable car, have a good Friday and put it on pole. It's easy," laughed the 31-year-old.
Button has won in Melbourne for the past two years, with Brawn in 2009 and McLaren last year, and he refused to give up hope of a hat-trick.
"In Melbourne last year nobody thought I'd win the race starting fourth, the Red Bulls were half a second up the road or something so you never really know, especially when the weather's up and down," he said.
"We are not in the best position arriving there and you'd say the Red Bulls and Ferraris are a good chunk in front of us and I don't know about anyone else.
"So I think we've got to forget about where we stand at the moment compared to others and just get our heads down and move this thing forward because this isn't where McLaren should be or where McLaren will be for long," he added.
"There's a great bunch of people here and we are all working as hard as we can to hopefully resolve some of the issues and turn up in Melbourne even with a stronger package."
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