Honda pair blame balance for poor pace

The pair have high hopes that aerodynamic updates to their RA108 will allow them to score their first points of the season at Barcelona this weekend.

But with the Honda Racing duo finding the track offering less grip than at last week's test, the pair hope that the situation improves ahead of qualifying.

Button, who was 15th in the afternoon session, said: "Today was really important as I didn't get any testing mileage last week due to the bad weather we had here on the final day, so it was good to get some laps in with the new developments on the car.

"We haven't found the best set-up yet as I was struggling with the balance today, but I'm confident that we will find the improvements tomorrow."

Barrichello, who was only 17th in the afternoon, added: "We've had a tough day today and the main challenge has been to get the car working in the same way that it did at the test last week.

"The balance and feel of the car was completely different today, so we had to really work around the set-up trying to rediscover the feeling we had from the test.

"We have a lot of work to do tonight in terms of studying the data to understand where the issues lie. I felt very confident after the test, and although there is an improvement in the car here, we still have work to do to achieve our expectations of progressing to the third session of qualifying. It's going to be difficult but not impossible."

Honda's head of race and test engineering, Steve Clark, believed it could take the team until qualifying to work out exactly where they stand against the opposition.

"The track conditions are completely different today compared to the end of the test and our task for the remainder of the weekend is to tune the car to find a good balance for qualifying and the race," he said.

"The only real indication of the step forward that we have made will be in qualifying tomorrow when we will know whether we have moved forward in relation to our competitors.

"We have been making steady progress so far, but with the field being so tight this year, even getting through the first qualifying session requires maximum focus. Our target will be to get both cars into the top ten."