Practice result deceptive, say Brawn

The Brawn team unusually wound up in only seventeenth and eighteenth positions at Spa on Friday after a difficult start to the Belgian Grand Prix weekend for championship contenders Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello. The Brackley team is hoping to improve its car's stability around the turbulent Spa circuit on Saturday.

With the championship leader amongst the bottom four cars, it was a surprising sight for readers of the session's final classification on Friday afternoon. "It was a tough session this morning as we weren't able to get much done apart from some wet running at the end," Button explained. "However, that experience is good here just in case it rains over the weekend, which is always possible at Spa.

"The second session this afternoon was much more useful. We worked through a few aero and downforce comparisons as well as looking at the tyres. We collected a lot of information but obviously at the moment we're not as quick as we would like to be. There are a few areas that we do need to improve on with the balance but the potential is there to do that ahead of qualifying."

With Button having complained of an unstable right-rear through Eau Rouge, Barrichello is confident that the BGP 001 is quicker than it showed. "We got through a lot of work today which sets the weekend up nicely," continued the winner of last weekend's European Grand Prix. "There is still some way to go to realise the full potential of the car but, as always on a Friday, the lap times don't tell the whole story.

"The car doesn't feel as competitive as it did in Valencia last weekend but we're going to be in a good position to fight hard in qualifying tomorrow."

Source: GP Update