Honda's engine plan backfires

This morning's practice session had to be stopped for 10 minutes when Honda test driver Anthony Davidson suffered an engine failure after just two laps.

Davidson suffered an even more dramatic failure in the afternoon, pulling over with the rear of his car in flames. In total he completed just 10 laps during the day.

Neither Briton Jenson Button nor teammate Rubens Barrichello left the pitlane, allowing them to change back to the former specification engines without penalty.

"Obviously we had a difficult day with, unusually, two failures occurring very early on in the life of each engine in Anthony's car," said sporting director Gil de Ferran. "Since they were totally unexpected, we elected not to run the race cars until we could gain a better understanding of what was causing them. 

"Needless to say this has not been the best start to the weekend for us as we collected very little data today about cars and tyres, however thankfully we were testing here a week ago so the set-up of the car and tyre choice are more dialled-in than they would otherwise be. 

"We look forward to a better day tomorrow."