BAR Hope for European Revival

On the back of deliberately retiring from the Australian Grand Prix and early engine failures in Malaysia, BAR saw Takuma Sato retire with brake problems and Jenson Button drop out with clutch failure at Sakhir.

That has left BAR without any points so far this year, a complete contrast from their form of 12 months ago when Button was regularly finishing on the podium.

And with BAR technical director Geoff Willis admitting that there are no excuses for the current form, the team are fully focused on kick-starting their campaign in the San Marino Grand Prix.

"This sort of reliability is not typical of us and we will get to the bottom of it," said Willis. "It is not ideal, but I think we will just have to draw a line under it and start from scratch when we get to Europe."

BAR are hoping to work on aerodynamic improvements during testing at Barcelona in Spain this week, where the team will hope to get to the bottom of the latest mechanical dramas.

"I think that was a character building day," said Willis, looking back on the Bahrain performance. "It could have been worse, and we will go into the next race starting seventh and eighth for first qualifying in Imola.

"The car wasn't bad in the race, because we got the fifth fastest lap with Jenson even though he had to look after his brakes. I think we could have finished in the points.

"Obviously we are not happy with Takuma's retirement. We had runaway brake wear with his car with not a lot of warning, so there is a straightforward solution to that - material properties - so we will not be using that material again for racing."