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Fry defends Honda, Button

Honda Racing boss Nick Fry has hit back at his team and Jenson Button's critics in the wake of their worst weekend of the season so far at the British Grand Prix

Button's early race retirement, allied to Rubens Barrichello's fall down the order, left the outfit with their first point-less race of the season - which served to fuel the criticisms of the outfit after their qualifying blunder on Saturday.

Fry insists that any condemnation of his team is misplaced - and has said that the Japanese squad are unified and clear on what they need to do to improve their current fortunes.

"I don't know anyone who is saying it is a troubled team other than those who want a headline," said Fry. "In fact, the morale in the team and the morale of the drivers and the encouragement we get from the fans and indeed all the other teams would indicate the opposite."

With the paddock and grandstands at Silverstone buzzing with talk of Lewis Hamilton's latest triumph in GP2, Button found his troubled weekend put in even sharper contrast.

And as teammate Barrichello once again proved the quickest Honda driver on the track, there were even suggestions that Button's motivation has started to slip. Such talk has been swiftly denied, however.

"I think you are straight wrong," explained Fry when asked whether Button's head had dropped. "Jenson, like anybody when things go wrong, is downhearted when it happens. That is a normal human reaction.

"Jenson has been absolutely remarkable. After he gets over the initial disappointment of something going wrong then he is incredibly positive. And Jenson more than any of us realises there is no point hiding in a corner - you have to do something about it.

"The only people who are going to improve the performance is us. If we all kind of say, 'well it is someone else's responsibility', then you don't go anywhere. I have never seen that from Jenson at all, in fact it is quite the opposite. He is definitely a glass half full kind of person."

Having analysed the team's qualifying blunder, where they failed to get Button out of the pits in time for a second run in Q1, Fry admitted that maybe the outfit should have made an effort to get out of the pits - rather than simply resigning themselves to their fate.

"Given the fact that we had to put fuel in the car and then do a warm-up lap and then do a flying lap it looks highly unlikely that he would have made it," said Fry. "Should we have tried? I think you can argue that it might have been worth giving it a go, but it looked like it wasn't possible."

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