Top 10 starts for Honda drivers

The Honda Racing F1 Team will fill the fourth row of the grid at tomorrow’s Japanese Grand Prix. Jenson Button will line up in seventh place, ahead of his team-mate Rubens Barrichello, in eighth. After the rain of yesterday, the drivers were pleased that today dawned dry and bright. Blustery winds made it difficult to fine-tune the balance of the RA106s, but the team made good progress during this morning’s final one-hour practice session, in which Jenson set the third fastest time.

In qualifying, Jenson continued to set a good pace. In Q1 he completed two runs en route to a fastest time of 1:30.847s, which placed him fifth. Rubens had a slightly more troublesome session, after he was forced to abort his first timed lap, and with only one lap in which to set a time, he ended up 14th (1:31.972s).

Prior to Q2, both drivers successfully improved the handling of their cars around the demanding 5.8-kilometre Suzuka Circuit. They set their fastest times of the weekend so far during the session, with Jenson in fourth place (1:30.268s), and Rubens in 10th (1:30.598s).

For Q3, the team fuelled both cars with a view to maximising their performances in tomorrow’s 53-lap race. Both drivers changed tyres twice during this final 15-minute session and set their fastest times at the end, when their cars were at their lightest. Jenson’s best lap time was 1:30.992s; Rubens’ best lap was 1:31.478s.

The team can now look forward to a strong showing in front of its home crowd in tomorrow’s race, which will start at 1400hrs (local time).

“I would obviously have liked to be further up the grid here but we made the best of what we had today. On low fuel the car was very good but as soon as we put the fuel in we were struggling for rear grip. For some reason, in these windy conditions, the car doesn’t work so well but we’re expecting it to be a lot calmer tomorrow. I think it will be a tough race but I know we will have tremendous support from the Honda fans out there and we will do everything we can to secure a good result.”

“I would like to thank all the boys for doing a tremendous job. When the circumstances are not working in your favour it’s very difficult, but we have done the best job we can. Thanks to the hard work of the team I was able to qualify well inside the top ten today. This is obviously our home race so we will be giving it everything we have tomorrow in order to secure the best possible result and to put on a good show for our home crowd.”

“Our results in this session were satisfactory. In the end we were the second fastest team on Michelins so far this weekend and we are in a good place for the start of the race. Given the issues that Rubens was having this morning, we elected to change him to the spare chassis. As a result he was much happier and fought hard to secure his place in the top ten. Jenson was very fast throughout qualifying and got everything out of the car this afternoon. We shall see how the different strategies play out tomorrow but hopefully we can put on a good show in front of Honda’s many fans!"