BAR should get even better

"We've been strong every time we've been there for testing," he said. "We've done a lot of work there with Michelin and I think, relatively, we understand the car and the tyres much better there. We will go to Barcelona very confident of doing as well as we've done this weekend and maybe even a little better..."

Michael Schumacher, with a 16-point advantage over Ferrari team-mate Rubens Barrichello in the world championship and a 17-point margin to Button, admitted that he now views the Briton as a major rival. "Absolutely," he said, "Jenson is fully into it."

Button himself was not getting carried away after what was the most successful weekend in the F1 stories of both himself and his team.

"I just think that Ferrari is a long way in front of anyone at the moment," he said. "The rain on Saturday night might have made a small difference (because it washed much of the tyre rubber off the circuit, a factor which tends to favour Bridgestone), but it did not make a huge difference. Michael was 27 seconds in front of me before he started slowing down. It is a huge gap considering that I was leading for the first nine laps of the race..."

Frank Williams, meanwhile, thinks that it is only a matter of time before his former driver wins a race. "A driver is always coloured by his car - I've always said that - and clearly the BAR is an excellent car and Jenson is fully up to it."