FEBRUARY 2, 2004

New BAR-Honda blitzes Barcelona

The new BAR-Honda 006 went out this morning in Barcelona and almost immediately set a new lap record of the track, stopping the clocks at 1m13.867s, which is eight-tenths of a second faster than Button's own best - set on January 22 in a BAR-Honda interim car - of 1m14.607s.

The run was conducted on low-fuel set-up and was designed to see the absolute maximum that the new car could achieve in its current form. The team will now get down to doing more set-up work and developing the car so that it will be even quicker in Melbourne. Although the other teams say that they have not been going for times, they do concede that the BAR-Honda is very quick indeed although everyone is keen to see how the car goes in relation to the others when all things are equal.