Formula One news
Pointless day drops Honda to ninth
07 September 2008 / Results / PhotosJenson Button was the only Honda driver to finish this afternoon's Belgian Grand Prix at Spa-Francorchamps. The British driver came home in 15th place, while his team-mate Rubens Barrichello retired just before half distance with a gearbox problem.
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"It's been a tough weekend and unfortunately the car's performance has been a long way off where I thought we would be here in Spa," said Button. "I didn't have a great start from 17th and got completely boxed in with cars everywhere that I wanted to go. I then lost some time in the train of cars caught behind Rubens when he had his gearbox problem. The car was not handling well at all throughout the first stint as I had no grip and very little balance. So when I came in and switched to the prime tyre, we added front wing which I thought we needed, but not having had the the opportunity to compare the two tyres yesterday, this unfortunately gave me too much front end. Our rear tyre pressures were also too low which made the car very difficult to drive."
Barrichello commented, "The race was actually going quite well for me but unfortunately I lost sixth gear not long after I overtook Trulli. I tried to keep going but with the way that the gearbox works, you have to go through sixth gear before you can get seventh gear, which caused over-revving of the engine and the potential for significant damage. The team decided it would be best to retire the car as this is my first race with this engine and I have to race with it at Monza next weekend. Overall it has not been a great weekend. Our biggest problem has been our struggle to get temperature into the tyres, which affected our performance very badly."
Team boss Ross Brawn added, "Both cars got off to a clean start gaining a place each. We decided to split the strategy such that Rubens would be two-stopping and Jenson only once, in order to be well placed to take advantage of any variable weather conditions and safety car periods. Rubens did a valiant job of battling through almost ten laps without sixth gear. However we indentified that the problem with the gearbox was getting worse and it became dangerous for him to continue as we risked damaging the engine and transmission and the engine was new for this race. As a result of running behind Rubens during this period, Jenson lost touch with the cars he was competing with. Jenson had good pace up until his planned pitstop but struggled for pace after switching to the prime tyre."
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