The progress made over nearly 6000kms of running during the past two weeks of testing provided an immediate boost to Lucky Strike B·A·R Honda today as the team embarked on the first round of the European season in Imola. Jenson Button ended first practice for this weekend's San Marino Grand Prix with the second fastest time of the day, clear signs of a much more competitive B·A·R Honda 007 racecar and the promise of plenty more to come through the weekend.

Also buoyed by the improvements made to the 007 package, team-mate Takuma Sato posted the 6th fastest time of the morning session, although traffic for much of the afternoon session caused him to slip to 10th in the timesheets by the close of the first day's running.

Jenson Button: "Today has shown that we have reason to be confident for the weekend ahead. Obviously it's early in our preparation to be making any firm predictions for Sunday but this is where I would have expected to be in the timesheets after the progress we made in testing last week. We experienced the usual Friday conditions in the morning session with low grip causing a problem whilst the circuit was cleaning up. This afternoon we've been able to do more work with the tyres and set-up. We completed some reasonably good long runs but we still have some work to do to ensure we are able to get the most out of the new package in Qualifying tomorrow."

Takuma Sato: "It was a very good day for the team. We were competitive straight away and the car performed well, showing that our form has continued from our last two tests. It seems to me that we are back on the pace, which is a really good sign and we did not have any problems. I was caught in traffic a few times as it was a busy on the circuit today, but other than that the car was working well and we will work on the set up for the longer runs for the race on Sunday."

Geoffrey Willis: "We are very pleased with today's running which has very much gone to plan. Both drivers have been competitive throughout, with Jenson fastest for much of the session. The car, with its latest developments, is performing as well as we expected from our tests during the last two weeks. We now have some work to do this evening to make our tyre selection and we look forward to another good day tomorrow."

Shuhei Nakamoto: "Both drivers have done a lot of good work to day - we have a lot of data to study. I am happy that we are continuing to show the speed we found in testing last week."