Encouraging start for Honda at Sepang
The Honda Racing F1 Team has enjoyed a positive start to one of the toughest grand prix weekends of the year. Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello ended the opening day of practice at Sepang International Circuit in fourth and 11th positions respectively.
The team has had just four days in which to transfer 35 tonnes of equipment from Melbourne, the scene of last weekend’s season-opening race, to Kuala Lumpur for the Malaysian Grand Prix. Upon arrival at Sepang earlier in the week, the team then re-built its RA108s ahead of today’s on-track action.
As predicted, the weather conditions were stifling. Cockpit temperatures exceeded 50 degrees, the ambient temperature was never below 30 degrees and the humidity was 70 percent, but the RA108s didn’t miss a beat.
Jenson and Rubens completed a total of 115 laps. Jenson was ninth fastest in session one, but managed to improve his fastest lap by 1.2s in session two to jump up the time sheets to fourth place. Rubens was 13th in session one and he too managed to improve his lap time in session two to end the day in 11th place.
With a top four time in session two, is it too early for Jenson to get excited?
“It's always difficult to know where we stand on a Friday versus the rest of the field,” Button commented following today’s running, “but I’m hopeful that we can continue to improve the car through this evening and tomorrow. We have made good progress over the day and I'm happy with the car and the balance, which is positive. All in all, a very valuable day of testing in preparation for the weekend.”
Rubens also isn’t getting too carried away, despite a successful showing in his own RA108, and is hoping to wring even more out of his package before qualifying. "I was quite happy with the set-up of the car on old tyres this afternoon and we achieved some good work on the long run pace,” said Barrichello. “However, I am still struggling with the set-up on new tyres so we need to look at the data overnight and improve on that for tomorrow.
“We had a good weekend in Melbourne but it is important to keep our feet on the ground and continue to work as hard as possible. The car is very driveable and providing we get the set-up right for qualifying tomorrow, we are aiming to make it into the top twelve. If we can achieve that, then I am confident we can have a good race from there."
The challenge for the team is to maintain their strong showing today for the remainder of the weekend. Both drivers have finished on the podium at Sepang – Rubens in 2000 and ’01, Jenson in 2004 – and they will use their experience to help the engineers improve the car tonight, ahead of tomorrow’s qualifying session.
