Montreal's Circuit Gilles Villeneuve basked in temperatures of up to 33蚓 today as the Lucky Strike B嫂愛 Honda team made a positive start to its Canadian Grand Prix preparations. Race drivers Jenson Button and Takuma Sato ended the afternoon's free practice running in 7th and 8th places respectively after two productive sessions of tyre comparisons and set-up work.

In the first session, Jenson and Takuma recorded 4th and 8th places respectively and overall B嫂愛 Honda were satisfied with the day's work.

JENSON BUTTON
Free Practice 1 Position: 4th Fastest lap time: 1:16.710
Free Practice 2 Position: 7th Fastest lap time: 1:16.190

"As usual, today has mostly been about tyre work. We did some long runs which was good and it was nice to have the laps to be able to do a proper comparison. I think we know where we are with the tyre options for the weekend now. Obviously there is still a lot of work to do this evening but we are reasonably happy with what we achieved today."

TAKUMA SATO
Free Practice 1 Position: 8th Fastest lap time: 1:17.458
Free Practice 2 Position: 8th Fastest lap time: 1:16.313

"It was a good session for us today. We put a lot of mileage on the car and are confident that the lower downforce configuration which Anthony tested at Monza last week is working really well. Obviously we still have to work hard to keep competitive throughout the weekend but at least on the first day with the new track surface, we collected very good data and should be very happy about that."

GIL DE FERRAN, SPORTING DIRECTOR "As usual on Fridays we concentrated mostly on tyre choice, nevertheless we were quite satisfied with the results from free practice. Both cars ran reliably and the drivers seem reasonably happy with them, however there are still some characteristics in the car balance that we hope to improve for tomorrow."

SHUHEI NAKAMOTO, ENGINEERING DIRECTOR, HONDA RACING DEVELOPMENT "A good day today. We have completed a full programme without any issues and have got a lot of good data to study. Our qualifying starting positions (10 and 12) will allow us to push hard tomorrow - we will see what we can do."

2005 Canadian Grand Prix - Main Page
2005 Canadian Grand Prix - Team and Driver Friday Practice Reports Page

Latest Formula 1 News from B.A.R Honda: