Honda ready for qualifying session after good Friday

Free practice for the Honda Racing F1 Team’s home Grand Prix in Japan kicked off in damp conditions today, with the Suzuka circuit officially declared wet for both sessions. Anthony Davidson completed 18 laps this morning and once again stormed to the top of the timesheets, whilst race drivers Rubens Barrichello and Jenson Button completed just one installation lap on the rain-soaked circuit.

This afternoon, Jenson and Rubens reserved their running until the end of the session when the track was starting to dry out, but this led to traffic issues which made it difficult to gauge anyone’s lap times with any certainty. As a result, the Honda Racing F1 Team is generally pleased with the progress it has made in variable conditions and is looking forward to the improved weather forecast for tomorrow’s qualifying session.

“Once again, the conditions were difficult for everybody today. It was very wet this morning but I had a good session nonetheless and I ended up fastest, finding a nice balance for the car in the wet. When it dried out this afternoon, it was the first lap I have ever done at Suzuka in the dry and it was a really good experience for me. I didn’t get the best out of the tyres that I was on for the last run but it was still a really good fun day and I felt confident in the car.”

“I didn’t get much running in the session because of the weather, but it’s good to have Anthony out there putting mileage on the car so that we don’t have to compromise engine mileage. We also don’t get that many sets of new wet tyres. We didn’t do any running until the track started to dry out, then I got one run in at the end. At that time, practically every car was on the circuit and because of the traffic it was hard to get a good lap time. However, the car is feeling reasonably good so generally we’ve made a positive start to an important weekend.”

“It was one of those days when everyone runs just a little bit because that is all we can do in the weather conditions we encountered. We had no car issues but it’s difficult to see where we stand yet. We will just have to study the data this evening and hope for more good steady progress tomorrow.”

“It was hard to learn much today given the changing conditions, and for that reason the timesheets are not especially representative. With Anthony we spent most of the day evaluating which tyres were best for which conditions and at the end he had the opportunity to run around here on dry tyres for his first time ever. All three drivers are happy with the car balance, so all in all a good start for our home GP."