By Phil Huff
January 15 2003

After all of the bright lights and flash bulbs of Tuesday's media launch in downtown Barcelona, the promising new Lucky Strike BAR Honda 005 made its track debut at the near-by Circuit de Catalunya at just after 09.00 today. In chilly early morning conditions, Jenson Button was given the honour of baptising the all-new BAR racer. It was an early birthday present for the young Englishman who turns 23 on Sunday.

After one brief but trouble-free installation lap, the team's technicians gave Button the thumbs up to push the new car a little harder. Clearly with the first Grand Prix nearly two months down the road, these are early days and caution is very much the watchword.

"As everything is absolutely new on the car, the team will stripping everything down between each run and checking each and every component," explains test driver Anthony Davidson who is due to take over the driving duties tomorrow. "We will not really start to understand the car's full potential for a couple of weeks."

Despite those words of warning, Button clocked up more than dozen laps on the first morning, posting what many regarded as some highly encouraging lap times.

"We covered 14 laps this morning and the car feels well-balanced already. It's really just shakedown work we're doing today; we aren't spending time on set-up yet. There've been no problems so we're quite pleased. So far so good," reported Jenson.