By Phil Huff
April 13 2007

Jenson Button joined Nick Fry in the Friday Five today, talking about why the Honda Racing F1 RA107 is where it is, and what needs to be done about it. Jenson, explain the problems with the car at the moment, because obviously there are some fairly major issues. What can you say?

It's pretty simple really; we're not quick enough. We're not producing enough grip I suppose, for the drag. We can be reasonably quick in a straight line but the car is pretty difficult to drive and we can't do a corner the same twice, pretty much, in a race. It is very difficult to be consistent. Or you can put a bit more downforce on and then we're nowhere because we don't have the straight line speed. So we're a little bit stuck really. It is frustrating for everyone in the team, not just myself, but this is what we have at the moment. We just have to do the best job we can until we get something better.

Is it better or worse on certain tracks? Better or worse in race conditions than in qualifying?

It's easier in qualifying because you just have to do it once but in the race it's a much more difficult car to drive. We had a reasonable race in Malaysia from where we started on the grid, and Rubens did also, but I don't think that really reflects our performance. I think that maybe other people didn't have such a good race and we got the best out of what we had.

Rubens has been complaining about stability under braking, as he was this time last year, but I understand it's a different problem?

It's a slightly different problem! No, we are struggling with braking stability but that's not the only thing. It's very difficult to pinpoint one problem with the car. Under braking you have a stability problem at the rear, at the apex you have another problem and traction is not fantastic. But that's what happens. Everything seems like it's not working. It seems like the traction control is not the best TC that we've had and other parts of the car are the same. The package at the moment is not that great and as soon as we find more grip and downforce for the same sort of efficiency, I think all the other problems will fade away.

Jenson, when your engine blew, you left your car, obviously, without the handbrake on and it started to roll backwards. The marshals took about four and a half minutes getting to it. I wondered how you felt about what looked like slipshod performance.

When I got out of the car there was someone pretty much near the car but they didn't want to get any closer, I suppose, because nobody slowed down. The cars that I saw coming past when I was getting out of the car were still at full speed, obviously twitching quite a bit because there was a lot of oil on the circuit, so that wasn't very good to see. But the marshals were just very wary because of that. They didn't want to get too close in case something happened, I suppose.