2006 ITALIAN GRAND PRIX
MONZA - FREE PRACTICE
The Honda Racing F1 Team were back on track in Monza today
as free practice got underway for Sunday's Italian Grand Prix
- the final race of the European season. After a generally
positive test at the circuit one week ago, where the team
continued its run of competitive form, today's race weekend
preparations were unfortunately curtailed by engine problems
with the T-car driven by third driver Anthony Davidson.
As usual, the intention was for the race drivers to complete
a limited number of laps in this morning's session, leaving
Anthony to conduct the initial set-up and tyre selection work.
Unfortunately Anthony suffered an engine failure on his first
timed lap and the car was confined to the garage for an engine
change.
This afternoon, whilst Anthony was doing a competitive long
run, the team experienced a further engine failure to the
T-car after eight timed laps. Already armed with substantial
set-up and tyre data from last week's test, the team opted
to cease running whilst it investigated the cause of the problems.
ANTHONY DAVIDSON
"Whilst today's problems are obviously disappointing,
the positives are that we know the car is competitive here
and we have plenty of data from three days' testing here last
week. Had this been any other race track we would be really
struggling data-wise going into tomorrow but at least we have
a good baseline and the car was feeling good. We will have
to wait for the outcome of the investigations to talk about
how we might fare for the rest of the weekend."
GIL DE FERRAN
Sporting Director
"Obviousy we had a difficult day with, unusually, two
failures occurring very early on in the life of each engine
in Anthony's car. 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."
FREE PRACTICE STATS
Drivers Car No. Chassis Free Practice 1 Free Practice 2
Rubens Barrichello 11 RA106-01
Jenson Button 12 RA106-05
Anthony Davidson 36 RA106-03 2 laps No timed lap - 8 laps
01:25.356 P19
Weather Hot and sunny
Temperatures Air: 29-33°C Track: 32-42°C
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