JUNE 19, 2004

UNITED STATES GP - SATURDAY - PRACTICE SESSION 4 REPORT

Button shines in practice

Jenson Button, United States GP 2004 

 © The Cahier Archive

Jenson Button set the fastest time of the two Saturday morning sessions in Indianapolis, beating Michael Schumacher, Takuma Sato and Rubens Barrichello in a last-minute shootout between Ferrari and BAR.

The first session was very quiet and saw Rubens Barrichello again setting the pace. In the second session Mark Webber had a spin which ended up with the Jaguar gently nosing into the barriers and then in the closing minutes of the session the excitement increased as Button set a time of 1m10.056s, just missing out on setting the first 1m9s lap of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Sato was briefly second with a 1m10.251s but then the Ferraris fought back and Michael Schumacher put in a 1m10.199s and Barrichello clocked a 1m10.351s, so the top four men were all within three-tenths of one another. There was a gap of just over three-tenths back to Juan Pablo Montoya in his Williams-BMW while Fernando Alonso finally had his Renault working and clocked the sixth fastest time with a lap that was just a few hundredths slower than the Williams-BMW. The top 10 was completed by Cristiano da Matta's Toyota, Ralf Schumacher's Williams-BMW, Jarno Trulli's Renault and Kimi Raikkonen's McLaren-Mercedes. The two Saubers were significantly further down the timesheets than expected as the Swiss team was doing race preparation work which had not been completed on Friday.