The Lucky Strike BAR Honda team made an encouraging start to its home event in today's first free practice sessions for Sunday's British Grand Prix at Silverstone.

With the additional motivation of grandstands packed with support from British fans, all three drivers set about their programme of tyre evaluation and set-up work to provide a solid foundation for the rest of the weekend. In Free Practice 1, Anthony completed the majority of the morning's running, focusing mainly on tyre selection. He was the fastest of the BAR drivers in the first timed session in 5th, with Jenson and Takuma running 10th and 13th respectively.

In Free Practice 2, Jenson finished 5th with Takuma ending the day 9th. Anthony encountered what appears to be a gear failure, which brought him to a halt out on track and relegated him to 16th in the timesheets.

Jenson Button: "We completed most of our tyre work today but it's a shame about Anthony's problem. I think we know the direction we're heading in, we just have a lot more work to do to optimise the car in time for qualifying. The support from the crowd has been fantastic already and we just have to keep focused and do everything we can to build on today's performance and get stronger as we head into the race."

Takuma Sato: "We hoped we would be stronger here today after the positive tests we had earlier in the season. The car isn't performing as well as we'd hoped and we have a lot more work to do to be more competitive for qualifying and the race, as we are looking for a podium finish here. We didn't complete the full tyre evaluation but hopefully there is enough data between the three of us to confirm our choice for tomorrow."

Anthony Davidson: "This isn't the way I wanted to start the team's home race weekend. I had a good morning and was hoping to continue that progress into this afternoon but unfortunately we had a gearbox failure after just 14 laps. Our long-run performance seems to be very good but it's a shame that I was unable to complete our tyre evaluation. Jenson and Taku managed to pack some of my programme into the end of theirs, so all is not lost but it's not ideal. The tyres I ran felt good so we have good reason to feel positive. I hope today's problem has got all our bad luck out of the way for the rest of the weekend and the guys can go on to do a great job in front of our home crowd."

David Richards, Team Principal: "It's all too easy to set ourselves unrealistic goals on a weekend like this, as everyone wants to deliver something special in front of the home crowd. A challenging podium position should however remain our objective and, who knows, putting ourselves in the right place at the right time could give us the result our home crowd is looking for."

Geoffrey Willis, Technical Director: "Despite threats of rain during both sessions, it remained dry so we were able to complete our full programmes for both race cars without problem. Although our lap times are reasonably competitive, the car is not performing as well as it has done at the recent tests here, so we have more work to do this evening to improve the set-up for tomorrow. We unfortunately lost some of Anthony's running this afternoon when he was forced to pull off the track in the complex and it appears, on initial inspection, to be a gear tooth failure. The tyre choice is less straightforward than at the last two races so we will need to spend some more time today analysing the data."

Shuhei Nakamoto, Engineering Director, Honda Racing Development: "Not too bad day today. Although Anthony's problem stopped us completing the programme in full I don't think it will hurt us too much for the rest of the weekend. I am glad the rain stayed away!"