Anthony tops the times at Indy
The Honda Racing F1 Team’s preparations for the United States Grand Prix got off to a promising start today. The team’s third driver, Anthony Davidson, topped the timesheets in both one-hour practice sessions, giving the team a good basis from which to work for the remainder of the weekend.
Anthony lapped the 4.192-kilometre road course at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in 1:12.013s this afternoon, which was less than 0.1s faster than the time he set in the morning session.
The team’s race drivers also had a good day. Rubens Barrichello and Jenson Button lapped within 0.1s of each other in session one to be fourth and fifth fastest. In session two, the drivers tried different set-ups, with the result that Jenson ended up eighth and Rubens 18th, split by 0.7s.
As is the case on the Friday of every grand prix this year, Anthony completed significantly more laps than either of the race drivers. His total of 65 laps was three times more than either Rubens or Jenson, who were preserving their RA106s for qualifying and the race.
The drivers and engineers now have until tomorrow morning to select a tyre for the remainder of the weekend.
Anthony Davidson “It’s been a very good day today. We had a very conclusive tyre test so my work is done on that side of things and Michelin have some positive results all round. We also had a trouble free day. I feel much more at home in the car this weekend than I did in Canada and I think everybody in the team has done a great job to make such a good start to the weekend. It’s early days yet so we’ll see how the rest of the weekend goes, but I’m pleased with the work we have done today.”
Rubens Barrichello “It’s been a good Friday, although I don’t yet have a good balance on the car. We seem to be a little more competitive than in Canada and I want this to be a much better weekend for us so we’ll just keep working hard towards the race on Sunday and see how things go from here.”
Jenson Button “Today has been a positive day and we’ve made a few changes which have worked out well for us, so overall a good start to the weekend. It’s looking better than Montreal did at this stage, thankfully, and it’s nice to have a car that feels normal underneath me. We have something we can really work with and keep improving through the rest of the weekend so fingers crossed for tomorrow and the race.”
Gil de Ferran, Sporting Director “This has been quite a good Friday. We were able to complete all the planned running without any major issues and improve the cars throughout the day. It is also nice to have Anthony finish on top of the timesheets again, however there is still a lot of work to do prior to race day. An encouraging start nevertheless. It’s good to be back in action at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway – a circuit which the whole team enjoys very much and we look forward to putting on a great race for the local crowd.”
