Honda happy with first point of season

Jenson Button scored the Honda Racing F1 Team’s first World Championship point of 2007 in this afternoon’s French Grand Prix. He came home in eighth place after maximising the performance of his RA107 throughout the 70-lap race. His team-mate Rubens Barrichello drove an equally committed race and came home in 11th place.

Both Honda Racing F1 Team drivers had excellent starts, making up three places each on the opening lap. Jenson, who started on the dirty side of the grid in 12th place, jumped to ninth place, while Rubens improved from 13th to 10th.

Jenson proceeded to climb up to fifth place during the first pitstop sequence, until making his first stop on lap 32. He rejoined the race in ninth place, 4.1s behind Nico Rosberg. Rubens stopped two laps later from 10th place and re-joined just behind Schumacher in 11th place.

Both drivers used the harder of Bridgestone’s two tyre compounds for the opening two stints of the race and Jenson drove a very strong middle stint in which he set personal bests for lap-after-lap. The end result was that he jumped ahead of Rosberg at his second pitstop on lap 50, emerging 3.7s ahead of the Williams driver in eighth place.

Rubens stopped two laps after Jenson and he re-joined the race in 11th place.

For the final stint, Jenson and Rubens were on the soft compound Bridgestone tyres, on which Jenson lapped faster than Fernando Alonso and Giancarlo Fisichella ahead of him. At the chequered flag, he was just 2.3s behind the double world champion.

Rubens remained in 11th place throughout the final stint, but he couldn't afford to let up because he had to fend off the attentions of Mark Webber, who was just 2.1s behind at the chequered flag.

The Honda Racing F1 Team now turns its attention to next weekend’s British Grand Prix, which takes place just nine miles up the road from its factory at Brackley.

"It was an enjoyable race today and we've shown that the car has improved a lot with the new package. It's nice to have a car which gives me the confidence to push and I'm pleased with my fastest lap time relative to our competitors. This shows that our race pace is improving, although we still need to work on our qualifying pace. Once we can get on top of that, we will be in a much stronger position to compete for points going forward. All credit to the whole team today as a faultless race with good pit stops helped me make the most of our strategy. A good weekend and I'm looking forward to another one at the British Grand Prix next week."

"I was quite heavy on fuel for my opening stint and I don't know if that hurt my first set of tyres because I just didn't have any pace in the car. After that, the pace began to improve but unfortunately it was too late to make any further progress up the field. We will have to look into the reasons for the problems but on the positive side we can certainly say that the car has improved at this race and it is encouraging to take that step forward. We need to maintain our focus now and work hard to bring further improvements."

"Jenson drove a very good race which proves that the recent car developments have helped us to improve our race pace. Rubens was not so happy with his brakes and had to drive defensively as for much of the race he had lighter cars behind him. All in all one point is a small reward but well-deserved nonetheless."