Barrichello on row three as Button disappoints

Rubens Barrichello will start tomorrow’s Brazilian Grand Prix from fifth position, following a thrilling qualifying session at Interlagos this afternoon. In front of his home crowd, Rubens improved the set-up of his RA106 throughout the session and will start the race from the clean side of the grid.

Jenson Button had a disappointing session, following a technical problem on his RA106. An electronic problem seriously affected the traction control at the end of Q1. This persisted in Q2, with the result that his best lap – although only 0.2s slower than Rubens – placed him 14th overall and out of the running for Q3.

Rubens was given a riotous reception by the Paulista fans when he took to the track at the start of Q1. And he didn’t disappoint: he completed three runs en route to the ninth fastest time, after improving his lap time by 1.4s from the beginning to the end of the session. Jenson completed only two runs and was less than 0.1s slower than his Honda Racing F1 Team team-mate, but four positions further back in 13th place.

In Q2, Rubens drove a lap of 1:11.578s to be eighth fastest and through to Q3. Jenson, meanwhile, was forced to stay in the pits while the team tried to solve his electronic problem. In the end, he took to the track with just a couple of minutes of the session remaining and set a time 0.2s slower than Rubens, which placed him 14th overall and out of Q3.

Rubens’ trouble-free session continued in Q3, in which he set his fastest lap (1:11.619s) right at the end, when the track was at its fastest. He will line up behind world championship favourite Fernando Alonso on the grid.

The long-run performance of the RA106 has been good during practice at Interlagos, so the team is confident of achieving good results with both drivers in tomorrow’s 71-lap race.

“I’m very happy – it’s been a good day. The team has done a great job to get the car back to where it belongs after the issues that we had during practice yesterday. I was able to extract everything out of the car today and my last lap was really good, so I have to be happy with that. I'm looking forward to the race tomorrow as we have a good strategy, plus we have two Brazilians in the top five which is very good for our home race.”

“We had a good car today so it’s very disappointing to have the electronic problem and be starting the final race of the year from 14th on the grid. The issue affected the traction control massively and the car was undriveable at the end of Q1. The team tried to address the problem but there was only time for a quick fix and it didn’t solve it. I obviously wanted to end the season on a high and we had a good opportunity to do that but now we’ll have a bit of a battle on our hands to fight our way through the field.”

“We are happy on the one hand and disappointed on the other. Rubens had a smooth qualifying session and pulled out all the stops in front of his home crowd, extracting all the speed we had in the car today. Jenson had an electronic issue that was costing him a lot of time and as a result he was unable to make it through to the final shoot-out. Assuming that we are able to fix the problem, the full extent of which has yet to be determined, we should have a strong race tomorrow given that both drivers are very happy with the car handling and have been competitive throughout the weekend so far. It should be an exciting race!”