Jenson Button boosted Lucky Strike B嫂愛 Honda's scoresheet today with another four points in the team's home race at Silverstone. Having started from the front row of the grid, Jenson finished the 60-lap British Grand Prix in 5th position after a gritty performance to stay in touch with the front runners and ensure his team came home in the points in front of the predominantly British crowd.

Takuma Sato started the race two laps behind the rest of the field after he accidentally struck the wrong button on the steering wheel. This cut his engine on the approach to the grid and he had to be pushed to the pit box to restart his car. The team revised his strategy and fuelled him for a single pitstop but because of his problems at the start it was impossible to get him into a points-scoring position.

The team now heads to Jerez for a three-day test in preparation for round 11 of the World Championship in Hockenheim in two weeks' time.

JENSON BUTTON
Position: 5th Best Lap Time: 1:21.993

"I'm obviously not going to be happy with a result like this at my home race but it was evident that we can't expect any more from the car at the moment. We came here hoping that we would benefit from our improvements but they obviously didn't go far enough and we are still some way behind. The top two teams are just in a different league from the rest of the field at the moment and watching the cars in front and behind me was just staggering with the amount of grip they had in the high-speed corners. We are strong compared to the rest of the teams. I finished over half a minute ahead of Michael in sixth. Still we got some more points for the team and put on a good race for the British fans here this afternoon. I'm just sorry that I couldn't get the podium that we all wanted."

TAKUMA SATO
Position: 16th Best Lap Time: 1:22.551

"The simple fact is that as I was going through the start procedure on the way to the grid, I hit the wrong button on the steering wheel as I was warming up the tyres. I would like to apologise to everyone in the team, everyone who got the car ready and put so much preparation into the British Grand Prix this weekend. I couldn't deliver the result we wanted and could have had today. The team did a great job to get me back in the race and I tried my best but was so far behind that I couldn't do anything. It's been a tough year for us all and we can only continue to keep trying and aim for better things in the second half of the season."

GIL DE FERRAN, SPORTING DIRECTOR
"Jenson drove very well today in front of his home crowd, getting the most out of the car and bringing us a few more points. Clearly we needed to find a little more pace today to finish higher up than we did. We will continue to develop the car during the Jerez test next week before the August break, in an attempt to close the gap to our competitors and we will continue to make every effort to do so until the end of the season. On Taku's car it seems that he made a mistake and hit the wrong button on his way to the grid which cut the engine. After that we switched his strategy to a one stop and he was able to lap consistently at a very good pace."

SHUHEI NAKAMOTO, ENGINEERING DIRECTOR, HONDA RACING DEVELOPMENT
"Jenson produced a solid performance for his fifth place, which is an accurate reflection of how our package compares to the rest of the field at the moment. Taku put in some good lap times after we switched to a one-stop strategy following his problem at the start and must put today behind him and look forward to Hockenheim. We now have to keep up the pace of development to close the gap to the top two teams."

2005 British Grand Prix - Main Page
2005 British Grand Prix - Team and Driver Race Reports Page

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