Barcelona 1: Jenson on top

Button set his killer time in a low-fuel qualifying run this morning, just a day after the BAR 006 was launched at the track. He did very few laps for the remainder of the day. Gene was second and Ralf Schumacher fourth, both driving the FW26. Third was Button's team-mate Takuma Sato, who was still driving the interim chassis.

Schumacher was not at all concerned about Button's pace: "Good luck to all these people who keep on smashing lap records," he said. "I'm not looking for lap records now. I'd rather have a lap record in Melbourne."

McLaren's day wasn't too good, judging from the timesheets. The test driving crew was out in force (Kimi Raikkonen arrives tomorrow), with Pedro de la Rosa, Alex Wurz and Darren Turner all running the new car. However, the configurations of the McLarens was said to have differed internally and there were a few problems.

De la Rosa was trying new types of brakes, reporting an improvement in what had been a trouble area. His programme was hampered by technical problems, however. Wurz was eighth of the nine runners, 3.2 seconds off Button's time. "The car felt so good in Valencia," said Wurz. "But today I just couldn't get the flow going."



Jenson Button (BAR-Honda) 1m13.867s 27
Marc Gene (Williams-BMW) 1m15.302s 59
Takuma Sato (BAR-Honda) 1m15.594s 75
Ralf Schumacher (Williams-BMW) 1m16.016s 64
Luca Badoer (Ferrari) 1m16.302s 80
Giancarlo Fisichella (Sauber-Petronas) 1m16.584s 85
Pedro de la Rosa (McLaren-Mercedes) 1m16.955s 59
Alex Wurz (McLaren-Mercedes) 1m17.069s 35
Darren Turner (McLaren-Mercedes) 1m19.887s 17