Underway at the 'ring
The Honda Racing F1 Team’s preparations for this weekend’s European Grand Prix got underway at the Nürburgring today. As usual, third driver Anthony Davidson joined Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello for the on-track today, with Anthony doing the bulk of the running. He completed 58 laps and set a fastest time of 1:32.399s in the morning session, which placed him second fastest.
The ambient and track temperatures increased for the afternoon session, and lap times were slower as a result. Anthony focused on long runs and set a time that was good for fifth fastest.
During the course of the two sessions, Jenson completed 19 laps, and Rubens 17, while they both worked on the set-ups of their RA106s. Their lap times placed them sixth and seventh fastest in the morning, and seventh (Jenson) and 15th (Rubens) in the afternoon.
The team now has to study the telemetry it collected today to establish where it can find more performance from the RA106 ahead of tomorrow’s qualifying session. The 5.148-kilometre Nürburgring is a very technical track, with a mix of fast and slow corners, and car set-up is crucial to a good lap time.
Anthony Davidson “We’ve had an uninterrupted day today and covered a lot of laps. The car was reliable and we’ve managed to find a good balance for short runs in the morning and long runs this afternoon. We have gathered a lot of data to look at from the long runs regarding the tyre decision and generally we are happy with our day’s work.”
Jenson Button “We’ve had a pretty straightforward Friday in terms of what we’ve been working on – set-up and tyre choices. As usual Anthony has been doing much of the running to enable Rubens and I to preserve our cars for the race. This is always a very strange circuit to get a good balance on because of the camber changes but the car is working reasonably well. There are a few balance issues that we need to solve and it’s just very low grip out there, that’s the biggest issue. I guess we will see how we can improve on that for tomorrow.”
Rubens Barrichello “The day was trouble free in the sense that the car worked okay. The car feels very limited with both front and rear grip to be honest. We’re not worried about the performance on new tyres, we just have to keep working for the race, which is our main target.”
