Italian GP: Honda Friday practice notes

HONDA-POWERED TRIO IN TOP EIGHT ON FRIDAY AT MONZA
Button, Sato and Davidson finish fourth, sixth and eighth in free practice

Lucky Strike B.A.R Honda's Jenson Button set the fourth fastest time of the afternoon in Friday Free Practice at Monza in preparation for Sunday's Italian Grand Prix. Honda-powered team-mate Takuma Sato and B.A.R Honda third driver Anthony Davidson finished the afternoon sixth and eighth fastest respectively.

Button, who completed five laps in the morning practice session and set the sixth fastest time around the 3.600miles/5.793km Autodromo Nazionale Monza, went on to clock a 1m21.124s in the afternoon session, covering 16 laps and ending the afternoon in fourth place.

In this morning's session, Sato covered eight laps on his way to clocking the 11th fastest time. In the afternoon practice session the Honda-powered driver set a 1m21.313s, completing 28 laps overall and ending the day sixth fastest.

Davidson was on strong form this morning, setting the third fastest time of 1m20.902s. In the afternoon session the Briton set the eighth fastest time of 1m21.544s, covering a mammoth 62 laps in total over both sessions.

Monza continued to enjoy warm and sunny weather (air 28, track 40 degrees) as McLaren's Kimi Raikkonen set the fastest time of the afternoon, followed by the Ferrari duo of Rubens Barrichello and Michael Schumacher. B.A.R Honda's Jenson Button and Takuma Sato sandwiched the Williams of Antonio Pizzonia, the trio lining up in fourth, fifth and sixth place while Juan Pablo Montoya (Williams) and Anthony Davidson (B.A.R Honda) ended the afternoon seventh and eighth.

Jenson Button Position: 4th

"Fourth place isn't too bad at the end of Friday. My lap on new tyres was pretty average so I feel this is a good start considering that we have tomorrow to focus on set-up. The times of the top six cars are very close so it's still quite early in the weekend to make any predictions. I think we have a good car here though and I'm sure we have a strong weekend ahead of us."

Takuma Sato Position: 6th

"This was a good start to the weekend. We came from testing with a lot of positive information and put in a competitive performance today. It is warm here once again, but we have all three cars performing well so the team are very happy. If we continue to work well on set-up tomorrow then I feel that we should have a strong qualifying session."

Anthony Davidson Position: 8th

"I had a good first session this morning finishing third behind the Ferraris and then achieved the fourth fastest time of the day overall. I'm really happy with my performance today and we gathered lots of useful data for the rest of the weekend which will make our tyre choice much easier. The times are very close at top so it looks like the weekend could be quite hard-fought, with B.A.R Honda in the thick of it."

Shuhei Nakamoto - Engineering Director, Honda Racing Development:

"A good day today for all three of our drivers. We're running a new spec engine this weekend so I am pleased we have done a lot of laps and have a lot of useful data to go over tonight. Overall it's great to be back at Monza, and I'm sure tomorrow's qualifying session will be very exciting."

-honda-