Malaysia Sunday quotes: Honda

"We're going in the right direction and learning more about the car all the time, so we need to keep up the hard work and continue to develop ahead of the next race in two weeks' time."

Rubens Barrichello - 13th: "Unfortunately my weekend was compromised when we lost the free practice running on Saturday morning, as I lacked balance in the car for the race today. I had a lot of understeer and was battling with that throughout the race. The drive-through penalty after my second stop was unfortunate, even though I only lost one place, as the markings in the pitlane to indicate where the speed limit ends were not clear enough.

"We have learnt a great deal from the past two weeks and I have been very encouraged by our reliability. We still have a lot of work to do on the performance but that will come through our development programme over the coming weeks in preparation for Europe.

"We are quite competitive within the very tight midfield group and it is encouraging to see that both cars made it through a very tough race today. We will learn from our experiences, both positive and negative, and I am confident that we will continue to improve over the next few races."

Ross Brawn - Team Principal: "This weekend was more straightforward for the whole field compared with Melbourne and we saw fewer drivers making mistakes. Sepang is also a more representative circuit in terms of car performance, as Melbourne can produce unusual results.

"Therefore to see Jenson finish the race in 10th place with Rubens just behind, in spite of his problems in the third free practice session, is very encouraging and a real indication of the car's pace. There is still a great deal of work to do but we are really starting to make improvements one step at a time.

"Our next development step will be introduced for Barcelona where we will see another aero update and we also plan to have some new suspension components. Of course every team will have updates but we feel the rate of our own progress is significant and we are hopeful that it will see us take a step up the grid for the start of the European season."