Formula 1

European GP: Honda Saturday qualifying notes

HONDA DRIVER SECURES SIXTH ROW SPOT Button and Villeneuve qualify 12th and 17th for European Grand Prix Lucky Strike BAR Honda's Jenson Button qualified in 12th place for tomorrow's grid of the European Grand Prix to start the race from ...

Published: Jun 28, 2003, 6:41 PM

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HONDA DRIVER SECURES SIXTH ROW SPOT
Button and Villeneuve qualify 12th and 17th for European Grand Prix

Lucky Strike B*A*R Honda's Jenson Button qualified in 12th place for tomorrow's grid of the European Grand Prix to start the race from the sixth row while team-mate Jacques Villeneuve qualified in 17th place.

The cloudy skies cleared and the air temperature rose six degrees to 25 as the final qualifying session got underway at the Nürburgring. B*A*R Honda's Jacques Villeneuve kicked off the proceedings as he failed to set a time yesterday due to spinning off in the rain. The Canadian ran wide at turn one and locked his wheels later in the lap, recording a time of 1m34.596s, finally qualifying in 17th place after all the runs were completed.

Button went out tenth in the running order to complete his one flying lap, almost half way through the session, the track temperature still registering 28 degrees. The Briton completed a tidy lap, recording a time of 1m33.395s, finally qualifying in 12th position for tomorrow's race.

Kimi Raikkonen provided a thrilling end to the qualifying session by securing McLaren's first pole position of the season. The Finn will be joined on the front row by Michael Schumacher (Ferrari), followed by the Williams duo of Ralf Schumacher and Juan Pablo Montoya. Ferrari's Rubens Barrichello and Renault's Jarno Trulli will start from fifth and sixth position on the grid.

Shuhei Nakamoto - Engineering Director, Honda Racing Development:

"Jenson did a good job today, considering the fact that he hasn't been able to get the best out of his car so far this weekend. We're satisfied with the reliability of our engines and I believe the package is capable of delivering some points in the race tomorrow."

Jenson Button Position: 12th

"I'm pretty happy with my lap considering the difficult start we've had to the weekend. I had planned to be a little more cautious through the Veedol chicane but as this was qualifying I decided to give it some instead! I was pushing hard throughout the lap but we were still struggling for grip so the car was very twitchy."

"It's been a tough weekend so far and we've had to try a lot of things with the set-up to improve for today. The balance isn't too bad now, we're just not quick enough. It would be nice to have some rain tomorrow but I don't think it's going to come. We'll just have to make the most of the strategy and to do what we can from the sixth row."

Jacques Villeneuve Position: 17th

"Today was a bad day. It's never a good thing to go out first for qualifying but on top of that I had a bad lap. The car was sliding and I braked too late into turn one, locked the front wheels and lost a good half-second as a result."

"We changed the set-up just before our qualifying run and it made a bigger difference than expected. We also ran a good race strategy fuel-wise so there were a number of reasons for us being slower, but even without the mistake we would probably only have been 15th today. I'm sure it will be a very tough race tomorrow because we'll be starting well behind where we normally should be and that will hurt us for sure."

-honda-

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