APRIL 15, 2005

BAR keeps up the pace

The Lucky Strike BAR Honda team continued to set the pace in testing at Paul Ricard on Thursday, following on from the successful test last week in Barcelona, when Jenson Button broke the lap record at the Circuit de Catalunya. This week Takuma Sato did the same at Paul Ricard and Button came in just behind him. Sato's best lap was a 1m02.839s, while Button stopped the clocks at 1m03.093s. Perhaps more importantly the BAR-Hondas were also very reliable.

"We have continued the excellent progress made last week in Barcelona with further performance improvements this week," reported chief test engineer Mark Ellis. "The excellent reliability of the car has enabled us to complete our whole test programme in only two days. All our drivers have made positive comments on the improvements to the car since we tested here three weeks ago. Over the two tests since Bahrain we have completed almost 6000kms of testing which has proved extremely encouraging for the team and everyone is optimistic ahead of the first European race at Imola next week."