BAR promises more to come

The increase in ambient temperature from Melbourne to Kuala Lumpur, the team's growing experience of how to cope with Michelin's tyre degradation over a race weekend and the fact that both its drivers Jenson Button and Takuma Sato were hampered during last weekend's race by damage to front wings suggest that BAR-Honda may be able to build on its competitive start to the season.

Button raced well in Melbourne but the team's lack of experience with Michelin showed and the 006 proved hard on its tyres during the race. This coupled with a sticking fuel rig conspired to place the Englishman 'only' sixth at the end of the race.

"It's great to be on the scoreboard already and we are going to Sepang with an even better package," said Button, "so there is no reason to think we can't qualify and race well again.

"It's given me confidence that the car was so reliable in the first race and now that we have so much more experience with the car and the Michelin tyres, we should be able to further improve on our race pace."

The team's technical director Geoff Willis is so confident in the car's ultimate potential that he was actually disappointed with Button's sixth place: "We had a problem with the front wing on both cars, which were damaged at the first corner but we think Sepang should suit our car a little better as it tends to work well when the track is hotter.

"Sepang is not really a power circuit, you just need to be aerodynamically efficient and have good braking stability. Reliability in higher temperatures is also an issue and it will be hard on the cars and drivers. We are going there in a confident mood and looking to challenge the top three teams. We are happy with our qualifying pace and focusing very hard on race performance."

Although pleased with BAR's start to the season, team principal David Richards also wants to keep the momentum up. "We've now had an opportunity to fully analyse our performance in Australia which, with two cars at the finish and some points on the board, was encouraging. We are certain, however, that there is far more performance to come out of the car and the team.

"The Sepang track and the high temperatures in Malaysia should make for a very different set of circumstances to Melbourne and I'm confident that this will be to BAR's advantage."