Q. How important to the team was Jenson' Buttons sixth place in Barcelona?
"We were extremely pleased to pick up our first points of the season in Barcelona and it was just reward for the efforts that everyone has put in over the last few months. We took many positives from the race weekend, including the good performance of the new aero package and our strategy working well, with the execution of the pit stops being especially good. Of course, there are challenges to be overcome, however I am confident we have the right attitude and commitment to resolve these. There is tremendous potential in this team and our three points in Barcelona was the first step at the start of a very intense few months of racing."
Jenson Button, Driver
Q. Knowing the strengths of the RA108, do you expect the car to be competitive at the Turkish Grand Prix?
"The Spanish Grand Prix was our first major upgrade to the RA108 and the new aero package definitely gave us a performance improvement over the weekend. It's good to know that we are improving the car step-by-step and I was able to develop a good understanding of the new developments. The car that we take to Turkey will be essentially the same package, therefore our focus will be getting onto Q3 and qualifying in the top ten. Turkey is a circuit that I have always been competitive at, and really enjoy driving, so I am hopeful that we will have a good race."
Rubens Barrichello
Q. You reach 257 Grand Prix appearances this weekend. What does this mean to you?
"Becoming the most experienced Formula One driver ever means a great deal to me. I've had a long career in Formula One and I have so many wonderful memories, but I don't feel any different today to the day when I started out on this journey in 1993. My first race, at Kyalami, seems like yesterday. I must thank my family and friends for their unwavering support through the years. I was lucky enough to start my career in F1 at a young age and I love racing as much as ever and, importantly, I still love Formula One. Whilst people will look back at my 16-year career in Turkey, I'm still looking forward and the next race is the one that matters the most."
Marcos Ambrose retains his eighth position in the overall Busch Series Standings overall and his second place standing in the Busch Class. He also maintains his tight tussle with ex-Formula One driver Juan Pablo Montoya in the Raybestos Rookie of the Year competition. Montoya finished one place ahead of Ambrose last Friday night.
Ambrose ran comfortably inside the top 15 for the first half of the race. The two-time Australian V8 Supercar Champion dropped down the order slightly in the flurry of late-race pit stops and once among the battling on the verge of the top 20 he was unable to forge a break and get back up the order. Ambrose encountered a close shave on the final lap of the race as he avoided a series of clashes that culminated in his Wood Brothers/JTG Racing team-mate Jon Wood crashing when he was left no where to go when cars spun on the track.
“We were running well and felt good in the early part of the race,” said Ambrose. “It shows some of the progress we have been making that we can qualify in the top ten and run well on a one-mile oval like Phoenix. This is a tough race track and it was a tough field out here today. It certainly felt good running around with all the Cup guys in the first part of the race. "We ran well, showed some speed and we kept our spot in the standings."
Ferrari's Felipe Massa held off the challenge of McLaren's Lewis Hamilton in the Bahrain Grand Prix to win his first race of the season. The Brazilian led throughout but was pressured early and late in the race by Hamilton, the first man to take podiums in his first three Grands Prix. Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen was third after challenging Hamilton mid-race.
The result leaves Fernando Alonso, Raikkonen and Hamilton in a three-way tie on points at the top of the world standings, with Massa five behind. Massa needed a good result in Bahrain after disappointment in the first two races and there was no repeat of his poor start from pole in Malaysia last Sunday.
"The results in the first two races were not what I expected," said Massa. "Something was missing. But this time we put everything together. I'm really pleased."
Having already earned itself a reputation as a world-class motorcycle manufacturer by achieving outstanding results in the Isle of Man TT and other races, Honda was keen to develop passenger car technologies through competition and started preparing for the challenges of Formula One in the early 1960s. The exciting project started to take shape in 1963 and by the end of the year Honda had fitted its experimental 1.5-litre RA270E to a steel-tube space frame chassis of its own design. In February 1964 Honda determined to press ahead. A new RA271E was prepared for the fast-approaching season together with an all-new state-of-the-art monocoque chassis constructed from aluminium panels. The first Honda F1 car made its Grand Prix debut on the daunting 22-kilometre Nürburgring circuit in early August with Ronnie Bucknum at the helm.
Learning the lessons gleaned from its first three Grands Prix in 1964, Honda's engineers laboured hard through the off-season to overcome their lack of four-wheeled racing experience. To boost the team's chances of success, the experienced Richie Ginther was signed to partner Bucknum in a two car attack. The Californian's arrival started to produce results - Ginther scored Honda's first World Championship point at Belgium's legendary Spa-Francorchamps circuit in June and led both British and Dutch Grands Prix. The final race of the season and of the 1.5-litre regulations was staged in Mexico - it was a landmark event for Honda too. Ginther grabbed the lead at the start and kept the opposition at bay to record Honda's maiden F1 victory on only its 11th outing.
Justin Wilson was speaking in relaxed tones about the twists and turns his career has taken as an auto racing driver. He talked about his unsatisfying season in Formula One in 2003, and about the literal twisting and turning he does to get into his vehicle, thanks to his 6-foot-3 frame. His tone changed when the subject of Sunday's non-finish in Champ Car's season opener at the Vegas Grand Prix was broached. Wilson, of Sheffield, England, completed only 20 laps because of transmission problems. He was not the only talented driver not to get through the 68 laps as three-time defending series champion Sebastien Bourdais and touted rookies Graham Rahal and Simon Pagenaud also did not finish.
But it may have bothered Wilson a little more than the others. Three-time series champion Bourdais has made his money, and Rahal and Pagenaud are the new kids on the block. Wilson finished 11th overall in 2004 in his first season in Champ Car. He was third in 2005 and second to Bourdais last year. There is a burning desire to take the whole ball of wax this year, so Sunday's result was not cool.
"It's very difficult," said Wilson, who will race this weekend in the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach. "It actually haunts you. I woke up at 5 this morning (Monday), was writing notes on what I think we need to do better. It gets under your skin and that's part of the driver making sure you don't fail again. "Failing is quite a big part of this and you don't want to feel that too often. Once it comes down to race day, you gotta put that out of your mind and think you have just as good a chance as anyone else of being right up there at the front."
In the back of the pack is where Wilson found himself most of the time during his one season of Formula One while racing for Team Minardi. Wilson said that in F1, perhaps more than any other series, it's the teams with the bigger budgets that are always going to do better. Since Minardi did not have a big budget, its cars simply were not as fast as those whose teams did.
"Formula One is very different to most auto racing," said Wilson, 28. "All the cars are built by the teams themselves, so there is a big differences in the speed of the car. You're basically racing your teammate because he's the only one who's got the same equipment you have. "We were the back team, so we were qualifying 19th or 20th. If you qualified 19th it was a good day. If you qualified 20th, it was a bad day."
Wilson moved to Team Jaguar, which was a middle-of- the-pack team, for the last five races of the season. But he was then replaced because Jaguar was looking for a paying driver, rather than one it had to pay. So Wilson happily moved on to Champ Car in 2004. For one thing, its prestige aside, F1 simply was not the grand endeavor Wilson had envisioned.
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