05/08/2006
NEWS STORY
The Honda Racing F1 Team's Rubens Barrichello will line up on the second row of the grid for tomorrow's Hungarian Grand Prix in Budapest after achieving the 3rd fastest time in this afternoon's qualifying session.
Team-mate Jenson Button finished 4th on the timesheets in the final qualifying session, however he incurs an automatic ten place grid penalty following the engine change required in his RA106 race car after this morning's free practice session.
With encouraging pace again shown from both cars throughout the weekend, and the strong performance in today's qualifying session, the team now hopes to carry this through to the race tomorrow and aim for a points finish from both cars.
Jenson Button: "We put in a very strong performance in qualifying today. The car is working well and the pace has been developing all weekend. I started my final quick run with confidence that I could get up there into the top three, then I locked the brakes at the first corner and lost four-tenths of my best first sector, but was still able to come back and be in fourth. It's very frustrating that I will be starting from 14th on the grid because of the engine failure this morning, even more so as the car is looking good. This is a hard circuit to overtake on but I'm going to go out there, enjoy the race and see what we can do."
Rubens Barrichello: "Well I'm very pleased with our result today. It was a great effort to finish in third position and also important to be starting from the clean side of the grid. The whole Honda team have made a huge effort in the last few weeks to turn our performance around and that work and progress is starting to show now. The car is competitive, we look to be consistent on race pace and the driveability is improving. I also think that we have made a good choice on our tyres so it's looking good all round. I'm hoping for a great race tomorrow, it's certainly my best chance of the year to have a good result."
Gil de Ferran, Sporting Director: "This was quite a good day for us with Rubens and Jenson qualifying 3rd and 4th fastest. During the morning session we continued to work hard to adapt our set-up to the unusual weather conditions. Unfortunately we had an engine failure with Jenson halfway through the session and as a result we incurred a ten place penalty; the cause of the problem is yet to be determined. Nevertheless both drivers were relatively happy with their cars both on new and old rubber, making us hopeful for qualifying. Qualifying went fairly well and we sailed through Q1 and Q2, then Q3 was nail biting and we came very close to the front row. Obviously we don't know what everyone's strategies are regarding tyres and fuel, furthermore Jenson will start 14th, however we are comfortable with our decisions and looking forward to a fighting race tomorrow."
To check out our Hungary qualifying gallery, click here