Barrichello: Honda making progress

The Brazilian was 11th quickest on the first day of practice, with teammate Jenson Button just one place further back, and he believes revisions to the car introduced in Monte Carlo have helped improve their form.

"As is always the case here, the track was very dirty today," explained Barrichello. "The teams are all trying different things so it's hard to get a true idea of where we are in the field.

"I think we can see from our running though that we have made some progress, so I am pleased with the day. We did a lot of running and have a huge amount of information to work with, which combined with our test data gives us plenty of work to do during tomorrow's 'day off'.

"I am hopeful for a more positive weekend and looking forward to it. It's always great to race in Monaco."

Teammate Jenson Button was also in a fairly upbeat mood about his day, although he believed it would be vital to stay out of trouble.

"Not a bad day overall," he said. "We achieved everything we set out to achieve and it has been quite productive. Monaco is always very exciting and fun to drive.

"As we saw today, there can be a lot of incidents which can make it difficult to get clean runs, so the trick is obviously to stay out of trouble. I'm really looking forward to the rest of the weekend."