Top grid positions for Honda drivers
The Honda Racing F1 Team enjoyed an encouraging qualifying session at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway today. Rubens Barrichello will start tomorrow’s United States Grand Prix from fourth position on the grid and Jenson Button from seventh.
Both drivers put in excellent performances, setting times comfortably inside the top 10 in all three segments of the qualifying session.
In Q1 they were sixth and seventh fastest, with Rubens just 0.1s ahead of Jenson. The segment ran without incident for the team, and the drivers both set two flying laps to ensure that they made it through to the second 15-minute segment.
In Q2, the drivers set their fastest laps of the entire session. Rubens’ time of 1:11.263s placed him fourth, 0.6s ahead of Jenson, who was eighth. Again, they completed two runs to ensure that they made it through to the final 20-minute session.
After some frantic pitstop activity between Q2 and Q3, both drivers were on-track right at the beginning of Q3. They needed to burn off sufficient fuel during the session to allow them to set competitive lap times at the end.
Rubens timed his laps to perfection and set a lap of 1:12.109s in the dying moments to put him fourth on the grid. Jenson didn’t have quite as much luck with traffic and he set a lap of 1:12.523s, which placed him seventh, just ahead of Ralf Schumacher.
At the top of the timesheets, Ferrari blocked out the front row for the second time this year, with Michael Schumacher on pole position.
Rubens Barrichello “I’m really happy with my position today. The car is certainly competitive and I enjoyed the qualifying session. I would like to thank everybody in the team because we have all done a good job to get the best possible from the car today. For sure the race will be tough and we have to keep pushing hard because we have some tough competition behind us on the grid. My aim now is to push for a good points finish and I think we have the car to do that. I’m looking forward to tomorrow.”
Jenson Button “I’m pleased with the way qualifying went today. The car was well-balanced and I think I have a good strategy. The challenge will be getting past the cars directly in front of me but generally I think we can have a strong race and points for both of us is certainly a possibility here. It should be a great race for the fans tomorrow.”
Gil de Ferran, Sporting Director “This has been a good day for us. The engine has been working very well throughout the weekend and the overnight changes were effective. As a result both drivers were quite quick this morning. Qualifying was less nail-biting than it has been lately as Jenson and Rubens sailed through into Q3. We are happy with their starting positions as well as our race set-up and strategy and we look forward to tomorrow's race when we'll put up a good fight."
