Formula One news

Honda keeps it together for race

Honda Racing F1 Team drivers Rubens Barrichello and Jenson Button ended today's Malaysian Grand Prix just outside the top ten in 11th and 12th places respectively. After a tough weekend for the team, today's race saw a slight improvement, particularly as Rubens started from the pitlane.

After incurring an engine-change penalty following a switch to the spare car for qualifying, Rubens reverted back to his preferred car for the race. The short first stint of a two-stop strategy allowed him to leapfrog many competitors and recover well from yesterday's disappointing qualifying performance. "We can never be happy finishing 11th but compared with what we had in qualifying yesterday I guess we have had a reasonable race today," said Barrichello. "For the last two race weekends we've had a bad qualifying and then the races have shown that we could have been closer to the points had we not suffered on Saturdays. For the next race our focus has to be on improving our qualifying performance and that's all we can do to move forward for now."

Jenson's race was blighted by contact from Sutil at turn four on the opening lap and a lack of rear grip in the first two stints. A front wing adjustment improved the car for the final stint and he went on to climb back up to within 0.7secs of his team-mate at the chequered flag. 


"A tough race, as we expected," said Button after the race. "I had a pretty terrible first stint. Sutil drove over the side of my car and there was some damage, although how much of a difference that made I don't know. During the first two stints I was suffering massively due to lack of rear grip. We came down quite a bit with the front wing level for the final stint, went miles forward on the brake bias and took some pressure out of the tyres to improve things slightly. We were still only 12th but after yesterday we can consider this a small step forward."

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