22/07/2005
NEWS STORY
Lucky Strike BAR Honda enjoyed a positive start to its German Grand Prix preparations today with the first two free practice sessions for Sunday's 67-lap race. Jenson Button ended the morning session 4th, with his team-mate Takuma in 9th place.
This afternoon, the field was much closer as many drivers were focusing on long-run tyre work. Jenson and Takuma finished the second session 13th and 18th, with just a second covering 14 runners. The car has been well-balanced despite the lower than usual track temperatures here and both drivers achieved plenty of running and useful data as a consequence, which leaves them well placed to improve as the weekend progresses.
<b>Jenson Button:</b> "We've made a good start to the weekend today, completing all our usual Friday testing and tyre comparison runs. The car seems to be working reasonably well and we got some valuable data on the track conditions, which may prove useful on Sunday as the forecast is for similarly cool and overcast weather to what we've seen here today."
<b>Takuma Sato:</b> "Both sessions went well today and we have done a reasonable amount of running. We suffered a little bit with lack of grip as the temperatures were quite cold. The balance of the car was good and we just have to work on gaining more speed before tomorrow, but overall the weekend has started well."
<b>Gil de Ferran:</b> "Overall we are reasonably happy with today's work. Once again we concentrated on race set-up and tyre evaluation. Because of the threat of rain, many people played the two sessions differently, so it became quite hard to figure out where we stack up in terms of speed. On the other hand, both drivers seem quite happy with the car and hopefully we can find some more pace tomorrow."
<b>Shuhei Nakamotyo:</b> "We have covered a reasonable distance and worked through all the planned programmes. We have to analyse the data to improve from this baseline as we aim for a strong race on Sunday."