By Phil Huff
September 4 2005

The promising pace of the BAR Honda's from yesterday's qualifying session evaporated in the heat at Monza today, with both drivers dropping down the field as the race progressed. Jenson Button started an impressive third on the grid, getting a good start that saw him maintain that place. However, as the race continued, the BAR Honda was passed by the chasing pack, leaving Jenson in eight place, following an unscheduled stop from 2006 BAR Honda driver Rubens Barrichello.

Takuma Sato suffered even more, despite a strong start. Lining up just one place behind Jenson on the grid, Takuma was passed by Toyota's Jarno Trulli, before regaining that place. Maintaining a strong pace behind Jenson, things went awry at the first pit stop, leaving Sato needing an extra unscheduled stop for extra fuel that wasn't needed. That left the Japanese driver racing a car some 50kg's overweight. Given that 10kg is worth an estimated 0.3s a lap, that's huge deficit.

"What seems to have happened on Taku's car," explains BAR Honda team principal Nick Fry, "is that at the first stop we got some very strange figures from the fuel rig, so we thought he'd got no fuel at all. It would appear, when we brought him back in, that he did have a proper load of fuel and in fact we seem to have topped his car right up to the brim."

"The whole weekend we struggled really, except for qualifying," added Jenson Button immediately after the race. "I know we were a bit short on fuel but even so it wasn't too bad a lap by Taku and myself.

"This is a really difficult circuit for us. We struggled here with the low downforce aero package on the car - maybe we just haven't worked hard enough on it. Hopefully when we get back to a higher downforce circuit, which is the next four, we'll be back on the pace again.

"Really, a point isn't so bad."