Honda leave first GP with 4 points

After a frustrating opening race, Honda had to be content with fourth place at Sakhir. After a promising qualifying session yesterday, in which Jenson Button qualified third and Rubens Barrichello sixth, today’s Bahrain Grand Prix ended in frustration for the Honda Racing F1 Team drivers.

Jenson finished the 57-lap race in fourth place, while Rubens was one lap down in 15th place, having been plagued by a gearbox problem for most of the race.

Jenson was compromised from the start when a clutch problem caused him to make a slow get-away from the grid and was only fifth into Turn 1, one place behind team-mate Rubens. The two Honda drivers then had a close dice for several laps, until Jenson got ahead at the start of lap four.

They were then elevated to fourth and fifth places when Felipe Massa spun out of third place on lap seven, which is where the Honda drivers stayed until Rubens made his first pitstop on lap 16. He rejoined the race in 12th place, but was unable to make significant progress because he lost a gear, which greatly reduced the performance of his RA106 race car.

Jenson made his first pitstop on lap 18, rejoining in eighth, and he then set about charging back up the field. On lap 29, he made a sensational pass on Juan Pablo Montoya for fourth, which became third when the one-stopping Kimi Raikkonen pitted on lap 30.

Jenson led the race for one lap before making his second and final pitstop on lap 40, and he quickly closed onto the tail of Raikkonen, which is where he spent the final 15 laps of the race. At the flag, he was only 0.6s adrift.

Honda now has just one week in which to move its equipment to Malaysia for the second race of the season, where there is everything to play for.

“Had I not had such a bad start then this could have been a great race for us. The pace of the car was absolutely there but the strategy didn’t pan out because I lost places off the start and wasn’t where we had planned to be at the pitstops. We may not have a podium but we have a very competitive car and if you look at the lap times when we weren’t in traffic we were genuinely as quick as anyone out there. I think we go to Malaysia feeling extremely positive. If we can address the clutch issue which caused the problem with the start we will be able to fight even harder with the competition.”

“It’s a disappointing way to finish my first race for the team but in the early stages we saw a taste of our potential. Jenson and I had a great race with each other early on which I’m sure got a few people excited! Soon after though I knew we had a gearbox problem and I had to try to race with one gear missing. I was unable to push and had no chance of a points finish, so it wasn’t a good way for me to spend the race. We know that the pace is there so we just have to resolve our problems for next weekend when I’m sure we will have a much better race.”