Best qualifying result for Honda this year

Both Honda Racing F1 Team drivers made it through to Q2 at the Circuit de Catalunya today, giving the team its best combined qualifying performance of the season. Rubens Barrichello will start tomorrow’s Spanish Grand Prix in 12th place and Jenson Button will line up 14th.

The session ran smoothly for both drivers and there was little to choose between them in either Q1 or Q2. In the first session they both completed two flying laps and set times within 0.001s of each other to be 14th (Rubens) and 15th. Jarno Trulli also lapped in the 1:22.5s bracket and finished the session just 0.001s ahead of Rubens, in 13th place.

In Q2 the Honda Racing F1 Team drivers completed two more flying laps, the first of which was another 1:22.5s, with Rubens once again a little ahead. But with the help of their race engineers they further refined the set-up of their RA107s and they both improved their lap times on their final runs.

In the dying moments of Q2 Rubens stopped the clock at 1:22.097s to be just 0.1s behind Nico Rosberg in 12th place, while Jenson set a time of 1:22.120s to be 14th.

Both Honda Racing F1 Team drivers think that the RA107’s consistency has been improved for this race – particularly under braking – and that should help them in tomorrow’s 66-lap race.

Jenson Button "This was a reasonable qualifying session for us today, all things considered. We are a little bit further up the grid and closer to P10 which is a nice surprise. We have done a good job of setting the car up for the race but I really struggled with the balance this morning and the pace over one lap. It was much better this afternoon, although I made a small mistake at turn six and lost some time, which is annoying. It will be an exciting race tomorrow but unfortunately it will be tough to get into the points. We have made some progress though, which is a good sign."

Rubens Barrichello“Although we are still far away from where we want to be this is our best qualifying performance of the season so far, so I guess that points towards some small improvement and we can be slightly happier. We started to make some progress here in testing last week and I am hopeful that we can carry this momentum through to tomorrow. We have a good strategy and this should help us to have a better race."

Jacky Eeckelaert, Engineering Director “Today’s qualifying session showed that we have made a small step in the right direction by closing the gap to our immediate competitors. Our fastest car qualified in 12th place, which is not what we aim for, but the drivers and team made the very best of the car that we have and should be congratulated. Everyone is working very hard and we are encouraged that our race pace seems to be somewhat closer to the direct competition, which makes us a little more optimistic for tomorrow and the races ahead.”