By Phil Huff
March 9 2006

Rubens Barrichello arrives in Bahrain as a Honda Racing F1 driver, following a lengthy spell at Ferrari, and believes that he'll be competitive from the first lap. "It's really exciting for me to be racing for the very first time as a Honda Racing F1 Team driver," explains Rubens. "Since I have joined the team at the start of the year, it has been a very intense period of working hard on the test track and with the engineers. We have covered an incredible amount of laps and have been able to establish good reliability as well as improve the pace of the car."

Honda Racing F1 covered more testing miles than any team, Ferrari included, recording consistently quick laps allied to impressive reliability. The team also took the opportunity to test in Bahrain recently, alongside just Ferrari and newcomers Scuderia Toro Rosso.

"For me, our most important test was in Bahrain last month where we could work on the set-up of the car in the hot weather we will face this weekend and also complete a lot of laps, which really helped my physical conditioning."

Team mate Jenson Button is heading into the opening race confident of at least challenging for a win, and Rubens shares that enthusiasm.

"I feel very much at home with the team now and I can't wait for the first race of the new season," he says, "where I believe we will be very competitive."