Tough weekend for Honda at Malaysia
Honda Racing F1 Team drivers Rubens Barrichello and Jenson Button ended today’s Malaysian Grand Prix at the Sepang International Circuit just outside the top ten in 11th and 12th places respectively.
After a tough weekend for the team, today’s race saw a slight improvement, particularly as Rubens started from the pitlane. After incurring an engine-change penalty following a switch to the spare car for qualifying, Rubens reverted back to his preferred car for the race. The short first stint of a two-stop strategy allowed him to leapfrog many competitors and recover well from yesterday’s disappointing qualifying performance.
Jenson’s race was blighted by contact from Sutil at turn four on the opening lap and a lack of rear grip in the first two stints. A front wing adjustment improved the car for the final stint and he went on to climb back up to within 0.7secs of his team-mate at the chequered flag.
Rubens Barrichello P11 | Fastest Lap 01:38.566
“We can never be happy finishing 11th but compared with what we had in qualifying yesterday I guess we have had a reasonable race today. For the last two race weekends we’ve had a bad qualifying and then the races have shown that we could have been closer to the points had we not suffered on Saturdays. For the next race our focus has to be on improving our qualifying performance and that’s all we can do to move forward for now.”
Jenson Button P12 | Fastest Lap 01:38.658
“A tough race, as we expected. I had a pretty terrible first stint. Sutil drove over the side of my car and there was some damage, although how much of a difference that made I don’t know. During the first two stints I was suffering massively due to lack of rear grip. We came down quite a bit with the front wing level for the final stint, went miles forward on the brake bias and took some pressure out of the tyres to improve things slightly. We were still only 12th but after yesterday we can consider this a small step forward.”
Jacky Eeckelaert, Engineering Director “Both cars were reliable through what is always a tough race here and finished with no mechanical problems. Rubens drove a very strong race considering the fact that he started from the pitlane, making up an impressive 11 places. Due to a first lap incident, Jenson had some damage to his car but with some adjustment at the final stop he was able to come back and finish less than a second behind his team-mate. Both Jenson and Rubens drive exceptionally well and achieved the maximum possible with the car we have for the moment.”
