UpdateF1 >> Formula 1 News > Sunday quotes: Honda

Pleasing progress

Jenson Button (P12):
"Looking at the weekend as a whole, we have made good progress and can take a lot away from here. Unfortunately the race was frustrating. I made it tough for myself with a poor start, which dropped me down to P14 after the first couple of corners. I got boxed in at Turn 1 and had a lot of wheelspin out of the corner, which allowed a few people to get past on the outside.

"I was able to get past Rubens on lap three, which was fun, but after that I quickly came up to the back of Heidfeld. He was very strong on the last two corners so I had no chance to overtake on the track and he was on a one-stop strategy. However in clean air, our pace was good, so this weekend is a definite step forward and I am reasonably happy with the outcome."

Rubens Barrichello (P16):
"After a good start where I made up four positions on the opening lap, unfortunately it wasn't a very exciting race for me. We decided to start with used front and new rear tyres which proved to be a problem as the car was out of balance for the first stint. Then at my first pitstop we were unlucky to have the problem with the rig which resulted in a small fire and a long delay whilst we got fuel into the car using the second rig.

"After that, my race was effectively over as the number of blue flags made it impossible to make progress. We decided to drop the revs on the engine and do some testing with the tyres as we had overheating problems over the weekend and it was good to collect some data on this. For me the actual race was one to forget really."

Ross Brawn, Team Principal:
"Today's race was never going to be easy from our grid positions. From the first lap both drivers were held up by Heidfeld who was running on a different strategy and this prevented them from using their true pace. The new developments that we brought to Hungary have definitely helped us to improve the performance of the car. As is always the case though, the rest of the field isn't standing still and we do not yet have the pace to score points on our own merit."

"Far from it. It's true that the break will give the Race Team members some well-earned respite from what is a fairly gruelling schedule, however the staff at our bases in Brackley, Bracknell and Tochigi will all be pushing on to help us improve our competitiveness for Valencia."

Written: Sun, 03 Aug 2008 17:15:06