France Saturday quotes: Honda

"That meant that my tyres had cooled down which compromised my lap, although I don't think we could have improved enough to go through to Q2 anyway. Hopefully we can be more competitive in race trim but it's disappointing and unexpected as we thought that the car would perform better around this circuit."

Rubens Barrichello - 18th: "A pure lack of performance from the car today. The lap times have been very close all weekend but unfortunately we are at the lower end of the grid. We are really pushing the limit of the car to try and achieve more pace but it is evident from how close Jenson and I have been all weekend that there is no more to come from the car.

"Having achieved a good balance after practice, it's hard to accept the lack of pace, but we just have to try and do our best from here and see what the race will bring."

Steve Clark - Head of Race & Test Engineering: "Unfortunately, it is not the case that anything went wrong, as such. We felt that we had made good progress overnight and had effectively addressed the handling issues of yesterday. The cars were well balanced with no obvious problems and the closeness of the two drivers reflects the fact that unfortunately that is the pace of the car.

"As always, the middle order is extremely competitive and we needed 0.3s to make it through to Q2. However, it doesn't seem that we could have found that time in the car today.

"On paper this is a track which should play to our strengths much more than Montreal, so we have been rather surprised and disappointed. Magny-Cours has always been a little unusual in terms of set-up and we have to hope that our pace deficit is specific to this race and that our form will return for the next few races.

"Considering how close the grids are then a few tenths in performance can make a huge difference in position. We hope that our forthcoming developments will mean we can still look forward to a competitive second half of the season. For now though we feel a little more confident in our race pace, so our focus is doing what we can to improve the car for tomorrow."