|
Solid opening day of practice for the Honda Racing F1 Team in Bahrain
The
Honda Racing F1 Team began its on-track preparations for the Bahrain
Grand Prix today. The team completed two 1.5-hour practice sessions at
the Bahrain International Circuit, in which Jenson Button and Rubens
Barrichello completed a total of 96 laps.
Track conditions were a problem for much of the day, as a result of
sand from the surrounding desert being blown onto the racing line. They
were at their worst in session one, which is why the drivers completed
the bulk of their mileage in the afternoon, once a clean line had
appeared.
Jenson and Rubens – both of whom are using
new Honda engines at this race, as per the FIA’s two-race engine
regulations – completed just 12 and 16 laps respectively in the first
session. In the afternoon, they worked on more wide-ranging programmes
involving tyre comparisons and set-up work to suit the demanding
5.412km (3.363-mile) track.
Jenson ended the day with
the 11th fastest time after completing 33 laps, while Rubens completed
35 laps to be 16th on the timesheets, just 0.2s slower than his
team-mate.
“It was a good day of testing today and we
achieved some valuable tyre comparison work which will set us up nicely
for the rest of the weekend,” commented Jenson. “We do still have some
set-up work to complete and we need to improve the balance, but overall
it was a good start. We are hoping to break into the top ten qualifiers
this weekend. It will be a tough challenge, and we will have a better
idea of how our competitors are performing after tomorrow morning, but
I'm confident we can give it a good shot."
Rubens
suffered from braking issues in both practice sessions today and
believes there’s work to do before he can attempt to break into the top
ten qualifying group. "The main challenge for me today has been with
the brakes,” he confirmed, “which I struggled with for much of the two
sessions. So our focus was on setting up the brakes and the car to
satisfy the high braking demands of this circuit. Unfortunately by the
end of the day, I was still having difficultly and losing time with the
new tyres due to a lack of confidence getting on the brakes, so we have
some further work to do on this tomorrow."
The Honda
Racing F1 Team’s engineers will now analyse the data from today’s
running to see how they have helped performance, as well as to see what
improvements can be made prior to tomorrow’s qualifying session.
“The
forecast is for strong winds for qualifying and the race,” said Head of
Race & Test engineering Steve Clark. “This will affect the top
speed of the car as well as the cornering performance. We have to
calculate this to decide the gear ratios and aero set-up.”
|
