Formula One news

Honda happy with Friday progress

Free practice for the Honda team's home Grand Prix in Japan kicked off in damp conditions today, with the Suzuka circuit officially declared wet for both sessions. Anthony Davidson completed 18 laps this morning and once again stormed to the top of the timesheets, whilst race drivers Rubens Barrichello and Jenson Button completed just one installation lap on the rain-soaked circuit. This afternoon, Jenson and Rubens reserved their running until the end of the session when the track was starting to dry out, but this led to traffic issues which made it difficult to gauge anyone's lap times with any certainty. 

"I didn't get much running in the session because of the weather, but it's good to have Anthony out there putting mileage on the car so that we don't have to compromise engine mileage," said Button. "We also don't get that many sets of new wet tyres. We didn't do any running until the track started to dry out, then I got one run in at the end. At that time, practically every car was on the circuit and because of the traffic it was hard to get a good lap time. However, the car is feeling reasonably good so generally we've made a positive start to an important weekend."

Barrichello commented, "It was one of those days when everyone runs just a little bit because that is all we can do in the weather conditions we encountered. We had no car issues but it's difficult to see where we stand yet. We will just have to study the data this evening and hope for more good steady progress tomorrow." 

Sporting director Gil de Ferran added, "It was hard to learn much today given the changing conditions, and for that reason the timesheets are not especially representative. With Anthony we spent most of the day evaluating which tyres were best for which conditions and at the end he had the opportunity to run around here on dry tyres for his first time ever. All three drivers are happy with the car balance, so all in all a good start for our home GP."

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