By Phil Huff
August 8 2006

Damon Hill feels that Jenson Button may have to wait some time before he manages to secure another race win, suggesting that the Honda Racing F1 RA106 isn't yet a match for the front running teams. "I believe that Honda still has some more work to do before we can regard the team as having consistently winning equipment," explained the 1996 world champion. "Jenson's win was very much a wild-card success in unusual circumstances and it's my feeling that when it comes to the next race at Istanbul it will be back to situation normal, with the team reverting to its role as a championship pretender rather than an established front runner."

"The first win is obviously the hardest because for so long it seems to be so tantalisingly and maddeningly out of reach. Jenson did a fine job but when he took that 10-place penalty on the starting grid for that engine failure, which dropped him from fourth to 14th, he probably went to bed on Saturday night thinking 'Oh hell, this is just going to be more of the same.'"

With Jenson Button's much publicised contract difficulties over the last two years, Hill touches upon what might have been. "I think you have to ask yourself what Jenson might have achieved driving for McLaren, Ferrari or Renault, the three teams who currently have a tight grip on the formula one winners' circle," said Hill, without answering his own question.

Hill, the current BRDC President, still remembers his first win, saying "I remember feeling a slight sense of bewilderment on the morning after my first victory. It was a strange feeling of having broken through an invisible barrier separating you from where you are to where you think you ought to be."

We're just happy that Jenson Button and Honda Racing F1 have now made it through that barrier.