Brawn pessimistic about Canada chances

Honda team principal Ross Brawn thinks it is unlikely that his squad will repeat their Monaco points finish in next weekend's Canadian Grand Prix

Rubens Barrichello's sixth place in Monte Carlo ended the Brazilian's long points drought and gave the steadily-improving Honda team their second top six finish of 2008.

But Brawn is pessimistic about their chances of repeating that result in Montreal, as he believes Honda will struggle on the faster parts of the track.

"We were pleased with the pace and performance of the RA108 around Monaco last week and it was encouraging to score further points, particularly with Rubens for the first time this season," Brawn said.

"However Canada is a completely different challenge and the downforce levels required are medium to low, the opposite of Monaco.

"Although I am pleased with the progress that the team has made over the last few races, we have been lacking the speed necessary to really maximise long straights, so it will be up to us to get the most from the performance that we have available in the car.

"I am expecting a more challenging weekend than in Monaco."

Honda's situation was made more difficult by the rain in pre-race testing at Paul Ricard, which struck just as teams switched from the test track's slower 'Monaco simulation' layout to a configuration designed to help them prepare for Montreal.

"We ran the RA108 in low downforce specification on a Montreal configured layout of the Paul Ricard circuit on the final day of the test before Monaco," Brawn said.

"Unfortunately the weather conditions were very poor which resulted in most of the day being washed out.

"However Jenson (Button) was able to achieve a few laps to obtain some basic aerodynamic data, which we have used along with data from previous years, to prepare our specific aerodynamic package for this race."