Button Optimistic of Pushing Ferrari in Qualifying

Briton Jenson Button is confident his BAR-Honda team will be able to fight World Champions Ferrari in tomorrow's qualifying for the French Grand Prix.

Button, third in the championship after six podium finishes in nine races, finished fourth fastest in today's second practice, on a day which had little significance as the weather hindered the teams' progress.

"We normally run a longer programme, but there have been such changeable weather conditions, with a lot of stopping and starting, so we haven't achieved all we had hoped for," said Button. "Luckily we got all three cars out in the dry and we can choose our tyres after tomorrow's free practice.

"I think that we have a good tyre, and the car really feels good. We just need to make a few adjustments to the set-up and I think that we will be up there tomorrow pushing hard with Ferrari."

Button's teammate Takuma Sato also rued the poor weather in today's sessions after finishing down in 17th position.

"We were not able to do much running due to the changeable weather but we were at least able to run our dry tyre session which will be useful considering that the rest of the weekend is expected to be dry," said Sato.

"We had a productive test at Jerez, so we are confident for tomorrow and we now have to see what the weather brings in order to make our tyre choice somewhat later than usual after free practice tomorrow.

"I am really looking forward to another strong weekend like we had at Indianapolis."

The team's test driver Anthony Davidson was the quickest of the Honda-powered squad, winding up third.