Both Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello claimed that the Brawn GP team are back at the front of the grid for good after an encouraging set of times from the pair of them in the two Friday practice sessions for the European Grand Prix.
Having utterly dominated the opening half of the season, the Brawn GP team has seen their pace stagnate in the last few races. Jenson Button, who remains the championship leader, has finished no higher than fifth in any of the last three grands prix, and team principal Ross Brawn admitted over the summer break that the team had taken a serious backwards step with one of their in-season development parts.
But both drivers seemed to be back at the front on Friday at Valencia. Rubens Barrichello topped the first practice session, with Button in fourth place, while the pair finished second and third to Renault's Fernando Alonso in the second practice run.
After the practice running, both drivers were encouraged by their runs, but remained cautious going into the rest of the weekend.
Jenson Button said that the pace of the cars was "encouraging", but he admitted that there was still plenty of work to be done.
"We've had a reasonably good first day of practice and it's encouraging to see that the car seems to be on the pace again," Button whispered, "The focus of our programme was on set-up checks and back-to-back evaluations to confirm that the work done back at the factory after our shutdown was in the right direction.
"There is still some work needed on the set-up before qualifying as I'm not completely happy with the balance but all in all the pace of the car seems reasonably good."
Meanwhile, on the other side of the garage, Rubens Barrichello insisted that the team had made a step forward with their car during the summer break, as they managed to sort out the tyre issues that have plagued the team in recent races.
"I was very, very happy because I put my lap on the first lap with a reasonable amount of fuel on the car," the Brazilian smirked, "So the car did improve since the last race.
"The reasons being because the team made a good effort of understanding some of the mechanical issues we had, also because there was a step forward in aero, so we are quite happy with that."
Team boss Brawn said that the team were benefiting from the higher track temperatures in Valencia compared to recent, cooler events.
"We've had a good start to the weekend today with two strong practice sessions," Brawn said, "The track temperatures are very high here, reaching 50°C this afternoon, so we have been able to manage our tyre temperatures well and not encounter the issues which have hampered our pace at the past few races.
"Both drivers followed very similar programmes as we revisited some set-ups from previous races as test items to increase our understanding of the car's performance."
Despite their recent issues, Button remains 18.5 points ahead of Mark Webber in the drivers standings, while the team lead Red Bull by 15.5 points in the constructors table.
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