BAR Honda's Brazilian Grand Prix challenge got underway in Sao Paulo today as Jenson Button and Takuma Sato took to the track for the first day of running in today's free practice sessions.

Conditions were warm and sunny as the drivers reacquainted themselves with the notoriously bumpy Interlagos circuit and moved to the top of the timesheets in the first session of the day. Takuma finished the morning session in 2nd position with team-mate Jenson close behind in 4th position.

This afternoon, as conditions cooled for the second session, Jenson and Takuma continued to develop their set-ups to the demands of the anti-clockwise circuit and further evaluated tyre options for the rest of the weekend. Unlike many teams that chose to run with new tyres, for BAR Honda this meant longer runs exclusively on used tyres which saw Jenson and Takuma finish the session in an unrepresentative 17th and 20th position respectively.

Jenson Button: "Today has been a pretty tough day for us. We've done all our tyre work and know pretty much where we are with the tyres but at the moment we're just not quick enough. There's a lot of work to do tonight to move the car forward. The biggest issue is that it feels like there is quite low grip on the circuit. We struggled a little with grip levels in both sessions and the balance isn't perfect either, however we can work with the car tonight and try to improve it for tomorrow."

Takuma Sato: "The car performed well today. In the second session we concentrated on the race situation and we also compared the two tyre options to help our choice this evening. All of our programme was completed and although we need to work on improving our pace for tomorrow, it was generally a good day."

Gil de Ferran: "We've run through our usual Friday programme today, spending the majority of time evaluating tyres and set-ups. Everything went smoothly and we collected lots of data which will be carefully analysed tonight prior to us making our tyre choice. The car and engine are performing well, nevertheless there is still some work to do tomorrow to improve the car balance."

Shuhei Nakamoto: "Both cars ran well today so we were able to collect a lot of data which we will analyse this evening. We had a good test last week in preparation for this race and we hope to find a good set-up for this track."