Button, Sato Raise BAR's Hopes

Button raised BAR's hopes of scoring their first points of the season with the fourth best time in the morning and seventh in the second session.

The 25-year-old said he would be shocked if the Honda-powered team did not score on Sunday, even if Renault and McLaren were clearly ahead of the rest after dominating the season so far.

"As usual, today has mostly been about tyre work," he Button. "We did some long runs which was good and it was nice to have the laps to be able to do a proper comparison.  I think we know where we are with the tyre options for the weekend now.

"Obviously there is still a lot of work to do this evening but we are reasonably happy with what we achieved today."

Button's teammate Takuma Sato completed BAR's good day by posting the eighth quickest time in the afternoon.

"It was a good session for us today," said Sato. "We put a lot of mileage on the car and are confident that the lower downforce configuration which Anthony tested at Monza last week is working really well.

"Obviously we still have to work hard to keep competitive throughout the weekend but at least on the first day with the new track surface, we collected very good data and should be very happy about that."