Fry encouraged by Honda's showing

The team had headed to the season opener unsure about their ultimate potential, but were happy to see Barrichello and Jenson Button qualifying well in the midfield, before Barrichello's strong run in the race.

And although they saw points slip through their hands when Barrichello ran through a red light at the exit of the pits, Fry was philosophical about what happened.

"On the one hand it has probably overall been a better weekend than we expected," he told autosport.com. "So you have to take the positives out of it.

"The car performance is still not good enough by any stretch of the imagination, but it is a good starting point. We qualified where we thought we would qualify and we raced well.

"Rubens did an extremely good job during the course of the race, and to hold off Kimi (Raikkonen) for that long was admirable by anyone's standards. Obviously events conspired against us, but there are probably people here in much worse positions than us."

When asked whether the team were kicking themselves for what happened in the pits, Fry said: "Unfortunately the red light was on, and he should not have driven through it. There is no doubt about that.

"Arguably the light was on a bit longer than it should have been, but at the end of the day he drove through a red light so we have no hard feelings."

Although Honda have no plans for a major upgrade to their car until the Spanish Grand Prix, Fry thinks that there is a good chance of them scoring points in the next two races.

"We've got what we've got for the next race or two, but we are going to continue to work hard and there is lots in the pipeline. I am expecting more of the same in Malaysia, and hopefully we can score some points."