Solid start to French weekend for Honda

The Honda Racing F1 Team had a solid opening day of practice at Magny-Cours. Drivers Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello worked through different set-up and tyre comparison programmes and ended the day in 15th and 18th positions.

The weather was unusually cool – ambient 20 degrees, track 31 degrees – for the time of year, which had an impact on the balance of the RA107 and the performance of the Bridgestone tyres. The engineers also had to take into account some re-surfacing work on two-thirds of the 4.411km lap. The new asphalt was very slippery, especially in the opening 1.5-hour session, which made life very tricky for the drivers.

Despite these difficulties, the aerodynamic and front suspension upgrades that the team is introducing on the RA107 this weekend performed as expected. The drivers both commented on improvements to the long-run pace of the car.

Jenson and Rubens completed a total of 139 laps during the day, which gives the engineers a mountain of data to work through tonight. They will then pool what they have learnt before finalising the set-ups of the cars ahead of tomorrow afternoon’s qualifying session.

Jenson Button “It was a typical Friday practice for us today as we focused on evaluating the tyres and finding the best set-up on the car. Most of the runs went fairly smoothly with Rubens and myself covering a lot of laps, giving us plenty of data to work with overnight. It was pretty windy out there today which will make the data comparisons more tricky, but the conditions are the same for everyone."

Rubens Barrichello "I thought the car was a little more competitive today, although that isn't necessarily represented by our position on the time sheets. We struggled a little with the balance of the car during the morning session, particularly with the rear end, but it improved over the course of the day. Unfortunately I didn't get my last run on the new tyres this afternoon due to the yellow flags after a car went off the track. That would have improved my lap time a little for sure. Still, we have a lot of information to look over this evening to try to improve for qualifying tomorrow."

Jacky Eeckelaert, Engineering Director “Both drivers focused on finding a good car balance for the race and working with both the prime and option tyres. We achieved a reasonable pace during our long run programme but neither Jenson nor Rubens got a good, clean lap on new tyres, which is important preparation for qualifying tomorrow. Tomorrow will provide us with a better barometer of our upgrade developments for this race.”