Honda eye stronger outing in Britain

Both Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello qualified near the back of the grid for the Magny-Cours race, where the Briton retired after a first-lap incident.

Barrichello went on to finish down in 14th position, on a weekend where the team admitted they were expecting to do a lot better.

Brawn reckons Honda should be able to be more competitive at Silverstone thanks to a number of updates.

"We expect to see an improvement to the performance of the RA108 at Silverstone, certainly compared to the French Grand Prix at Magny-Cours," said Brawn in a team preview.

"We have a number of new performance parts on the car in the areas of chassis, aerodynamics and engine, which should allow us to be on the pace with our current competitors in the midfield.

"Our drivers are looking forward to the challenge of the weekend and both rate this track as one of their favourites. Rubens has a great history here and always performs very well at Silverstone, and Jenson is extremely motivated to do well at his home race."

Brawn said the parts tested at the Silverstone test last week proved to be a step forward.

"The Silverstone test went very well last week and all of our development parts performed as expected," he added. "We will complete our performance and reliability analysis at the factory over the next few days before making the final decisions on our package for the race weekend.

"A major advantage of the test was that it enabled us to complete a comprehensive set-up programme and tyre evaluation with the Bridgestone Potenza tyre compounds available for the race, which will allow us to concentrate on pure performance gains during practice."