Positive start in Turkey
The Honda Racing F1 Team returned to the racetrack today following the three-week summer testing ban. In scorching weather conditions at the Istanbul Park circuit in Turkey – ambient: 32 degrees; track: 50 degrees – the team made a promising start to the weekend.
As is usual during Friday practice, third driver Anthony Davidson did the bulk of the mileage. In session one, he lapped quickly until a failure stopped him after 19 laps. Still, he was fifth fastest with a best time of 1:29.193s.
The mechanics did a fantastic job to get the car ready for the start of the second session, and Anthony was able to complete 31 laps in the afternoon to finish up fourth fastest.
The team’s race drivers had a quiet first session, only appearing in the dying moments when some rubber had been laid down on the racing line. Jenson, who is racing in Turkey fresh from his maiden F1 win in Hungary three weeks ago, was on top form and set the third fastest time, while his team-mate Rubens Barrichello ended up 11th fastest.
In session two, Jenson continued his progress from the morning to be third fastest again, less than 0.1s faster than team-mate Davidson. Rubens, who worked on a different tyre programme to Jenson, was 0.7s slower in 10th place.
The team’s engineers will now analyse the data from today’s two sessions before making its tyre choice for the remainder of the weekend.
Jenson Button “I’m pleased with the way today has gone. So we'll sit down with Michelin this evening and discuss which is the better tyre option for the weekend. I had a small mechanical problem at the start of this afternoon’s session, which cost me some time when we had to take the floor off, but everything is okay. The changes that we've made over the day have been positive so I'm happy with where we are at the moment."
Anthony Davidson “It is my first time here at Istanbul Park so it was really nice to finally drive the circuit. It's quite tough physically as well as technically challenging. It was important to get a good balance for the first lap and also the long runs today, which we were focusing on. The failure in the first session was a shame because I was going really well up until then and setting some really quick laps. Overall the car felt good all day and we have some good data to work on for tomorrow and Sunday."
Rubens Barrichello “A pretty straightforward day for us today although this morning I had a few set-up issues. This afternoon the car felt a little better and I’m quite pleased with the balance of the car now. There is some work to do to improve but generally I think we are moving in the right direction.”
Gil de Ferran, Sporting Director “It has been a normal day for us, achieving lots of laps with all three cars and with lots of data to go through tonight. Anthony had an unusual and unexpected failure this morning, the cause of which we are still investigating. Otherwise we spent most of the day making small set-up changes in an effort to adapt our car to the demands of this circuit. Overall a good start to the weekend, with nothing major to report.”
