French GP: Honda Saturday qualifying notes

The Honda Racing F1 Team's Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello will line up for tomorrow's French Grand Prix from the sixth and seventh rows of the grid after taking 12th and 13th positions in this afternoon's qualifying session.

Jenson and Rubens made it through the first of the two knock-out rounds, but in a close-fought Q2, with the top 13 positions covered by less than a second, they narrowly missed out on a place in Q3, despite Jenson being just 0.2 sec shy of P10.

Jenson Button:

"It's always so tight here at Magny Cours during qualifying and we saw that again today. We have made a step forward and the car is certainly better than at the last race in Indianapolis, although our position doesn't really reflect that. It's nice to be in front of some of our direct competitors in the midfield though."

"Looking ahead to tomorrow, our race pace is definitely better than our one-lap pace, you could see that in practice yesterday. We will keep working towards the race and I think we have a good strategy, so I am hopeful that we can have a better result tomorrow."

Rubens Barrichello:

"The car was definitely better in qualifying this afternoon after I made some changes during morning practice when we weren't really happy with the set-up. We took a little bit of a gamble but it resulted in a more balanced set-up and I think we worked hard to get the most from the car today. We know that our long-run pace is strong so I am looking forward to the race tomorrow."

Jacky Eeckelaert, Engineering Director:

"Today's qualifying was very close, as is typical here in Magny-Cours and we missed out on a place in the top ten by only two tenths of a second. The latest developments brought the car closer to our direct competitors, so we are pleased to see that our progress at the test last week has translated well to the race track. Our race pace on high fuel loads is now more consistent which is promising for the race tomorrow."

Jenson Button
Chassis: RA107-04
12th, 1:15.584

Rubens Barrichello
Chassis: RA107-02
13th, 1:15.761

-credit: honda