De Ferran frustrated by last GP of the season

BAR Honda concluded a challenging season with its tenth successive points finish when Jenson Button crossed the line in eight position at the end of an action-packed Chinese Grand Prix. Jenson Button started third from the grid and held a strong fourth as the car performed well in the first stint. But then two separate incidents behind the Safety Car cost him dearly and left the team rueing its misfortune. Button finished 8th.

Gil de Ferran, Sporting Director "Perhaps frustrated is the best way to describe how we feel about what happened to Jenson in Shanghai. Things were going very well until he made his first stop – both he and Montoya were picked up by the Safety Car as they rejoined the track and it then kept the pair of them behind for a few corners, we lost a lot of time. By the time Jenson finally followed Montoya past, the damage was done and that one incident sealed the fate of our race. Furthermore Jenson was delayed by Mark Webber when coming into the pits for his second stop, which denied us the opportunity to improve our position at that time. The frustrating thing is that, although we didn't have the fastest car, our speed and strategy should have allowed us to finish much higher up and for reasons beyond our control we ended up where we did.”

Takuma Sato failure to finish on his final appearance for BAR Honda also left a bad taste in de Ferran's mouth. Sato suffered from a gearbox failure after 34 laps.
“We are always really disappointed by any mechanical failure but even more so for Taku as this was his last race with the team and it would have been nice for him to at least take the chequered flag one last time while driving one of our cars.”