Zoom A race to forget for the struggling Honda team

Jenson Button was the only Honda driver to finish this afternoon's Belgian Grand Prix at Spa Francorchamps. The British driver came home in 15th place, while his team-mate Rubens Barrichello retired just before half distance with a gearbox problem.

The weather played a crucial part in the outcome of the race. Rain showers prior to the start meant that the early laps took place on a damp track. Barrichello and Button weaved through the spinning cars ahead of them at turn one to emerge in 15th and 16th positions respectively.

A dry line appeared on the racetrack after a couple of laps, allowing them to improve their lap times and set about reducing the gap to Jarno Trulli ahead of them.

On lap 10 Barrichello was able to overtake Trulli to move up to 14th place. He was up to 12th position by lap 15, but that was as high as the Brazilian climbed because he lost sixth gear at and was forced to retire shortly after his first pitstop.

Button, meanwhile, planned to make just one pitstop, on lap 22, but when the rain started to fall three laps from the end, he made a further stop for wet tyres on the penultimate lap. He came home in 15th place.

Jenson Button
"It's been a tough weekend and unfortunately the car's performance has been a long way off where I thought we would be here in Spa. I didn't have a great start from 17th and got completely boxed in with cars everywhere that I wanted to go. I then lost some time in the train of cars caught behind Rubens when he had his gearbox problem."

"The car was not handling well at all throughout the first stint as I had no grip and very little balance. So when I came in and switched to the prime tyre, we added front wing which I thought we needed, but not having had the opportunity to compare the two tyres yesterday, this unfortunately gave me too much front end. Our rear tyre pressures were also too low which made the car very difficult to drive."

Rubens Barrichello
"The race was actually going quite well for me but unfortunately I lost sixth gear not long after I overtook Trulli. I tried to keep going but with the way that the gearbox works, you have to go through sixth gear before you can get seventh gear, which caused over-revving of the engine and the potential for significant damage."

"The team decided it would be best to retire the car as this is my first race with this engine and I have to race with it at Monza next weekend. Overall it has not been a great weekend. Our biggest problem has been our struggle to get temperature into the tyres, which affected our performance very badly."