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Button: encouraged

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Teams

• Honda

Drivers

• Jenson Button

Jenson Button heads to Barcelona for Sunday's Spanish Grand Prix seeking a top 10 grid slot that he can hopefully translate into a first points haul of the season for Honda.

After knocking on the door of the top ten following qualifying for the first two races of the season, Button qualified his RA108 in ninth place for the Bahrain Grand Prix three weeks ago.

However, he was unable to turn his grid slot into points after suffering a puncture at the start of the race before later crashing into Red Bull's David Coulthard.

Button was nonetheless encouraged by Honda's continued signs of improvement, which were also on display during last week's Barcelona test when team-mate Rubens Barrichello finished at the top of the timesheets.

"Our performance over the first three races showed a steady rate of improvement which was encouraging for the whole team and has given us renewed confidence in the car," Button said.

"Although I was not able to complete much mileage at the test last week due to the weather, the team had three days evaluating the new upgrades, so I am confident that we are in good shape.

"The circuit here is very familiar so we will make the best use of our time on track to fine-tune the set-up of the car.

"We hope to be challenging for a top ten qualifying position again which would put us in position for a strong race."