Smooth Spanish Friday for Honda
The European Formula 1 season got underway at the Circuit de Catalunya today, with the first day of practice for the Spanish Grand Prix. The Honda Racing F1 Team used the two 1.5-hour sessions to hone its RA107s to the 4.6-kilometre track, carrying on its good work from last week’s four-day test session at the circuit.
The cars ran new aerodynamic parts today, with the result that Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello both reported improvements in stability under braking. Jenson ended today’s opening session in 10th place after completing 22 laps, while Rubens worked on a different tyre programme to be 18th.
The temperatures increased during the course of the day, and by the time session two started at 2pm the track temperature was 50 degrees and the ambient was 25 degrees. But the track conditions were improving all the time and both Honda Racing F1 Team drivers completed their fastest times of the day towards the end of the session.
Jenson finished the day 13th fastest, with a time of 1:22.808s, while Rubens was just 0.1s slower than his team-mate in 14th place.
The team will now analyse the data gathered today before making its final set-up and strategy decisions prior to tomorrow’s qualifying session.
Jenson Button “We spent four days testing here last week so we had a good idea going into this weekend of how the car would perform. Today we did the usual Friday work, setting-up the car for qualifying and race conditions. We have made some small steps with the stability of the car since the last race but the outright pace has not yet improved a lot. However, both Rubens and I covered a lot of laps today so we will look at all the data this evening and see what progress can be made."
Rubens Barrichello "A very conventional Friday. We test so often at this circuit, most recently last week, that we know how the car performs and pretty much where we stand versus the competition. I think the car has improved since Bahrain and we have a decent race pace but not such a good pace for qualifying, so we need to look at that this evening and try to improve during tomorrow’s final free practice session."
Jacky Eeckelaert, Engineering Director “A fairly smooth day in terms of achieving our planned programme and with no specific problems. The car behaved pretty much the same as in the test last week but the track conditions have changed slightly, so it was good to do the comparison work with both tyre options to ensure we have all the right data available for the strategy. I think overall we have made a small step in the right direction in terms of car performance but obviously there is still a long way to go.”
