Honda expecting tough weekend

The team focussed on race preparation for much of the day but suffered first-lap tyre graining issues, which hampered ultimate lap times. Both drivers complained of balance problems however.

"We were struggling to find a good balance today and unfortunately nothing that we tried improved the car," said Button, who was 19th quickest. "The problem seems to be that we find the limit of this car fairly quickly and that can be seen on Friday mornings when we are reasonably competitive.

"After that, we are unable to make further improvements. It's frustrating but as always we will make the best of what we have."

Barrichello, who was 20th and last, added: "Much as we expected to find at this circuit, the car is lacking performance here.

"It has been difficult to find a balance and the car is not particularly nice to drive with problems with both understeer and oversteer. The traction is also poor and we have a lot of work to achieve overnight to try and make improvements before qualifying tomorrow."

Honda's head of race engineering Steve Clark said that he expected things to improve on Saturday however.

"We don't believe our performance is quite as bad as the timesheet suggests, as we were doing sensible race preparation as opposed to qualifying runs," he said. "Nonetheless, we are still expecting this to be a tough weekend for us."