Formula One news

Typical qualifying for Honda

Rubens Barrichello will start his home Grand Prix from 15th position after maximising the performance of his RA108 in Q1 at the Autodromo Jose Carlos Pace. The Brazilian made it through to Q2 for the second consecutive race, while his Honda team-mate Jenson Button missed the cut by just 0.2s and will start tomorrow's race from 17th place. 

"I'm pleased that we were able to make it into the second qualifying session here in Interlagos today," said Barrichello. "We had a perfect lap on my second run in Q1 with the option tyres working really well. Unfortunately we couldn't get the same grip level in Q2 and were really struggling with understeer. Despite tweaking the pressures to try and improve, we weren't able to make any further progress. Without the understeer, I could have hoped for 14th or maybe even 13th but we were right on the limit of the car's performance." 

Button commented, "The car was a definite improvement from practice this morning as I had much more front grip. Unfortunately I made a mistake on my second lap in turn 4, which cost me some time. We made some adjustments to the pressures to help the front end grip before my final run and we were able to go quicker but not by enough. In any case, my car stopped out on track on my in-lap."

Engineering chief Steve Clark added, "Obviously we are very satisfied with Rubens getting through to Q2 for the second time in as many race weekends. Realistically he extracted the maximum from the car with the performance we have today and so this was, in his own words, a fantastic lap. For Jenson, the session was very tight and he didn't quite have the balance to make it through. After progressing through to Q2, with an evolving track, we were just unable to get the balance back with the single set of options he had remaining."

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