Davidson outqualifies Button

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Davidson outqualifies Button

Jenson Button (GBR) Honda RA107, Australian F1 Grand Prix, Albert Park, Melbourne, 16-18/3/ 2007,

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Anthony Davidson and Jenson Button duelled on the world's kart tracks for much of their formative years, and were team-mates at BAR and Honda until Davidson got his call from Super Aguri F1 to become a full-time racer, but neither would have predicted their respective positions in qualifying for the Australian Grand Prix.

While Button ended the 2006 campaign on a high, taking a podium finish in Brazil and scoring more points than anyone in the run-in, Honda's start to 2007 has been anything but enjoyable, with the RA107 struggling for pace as the team gets to grips with its basic balance.

Davidson, meanwhile, has been pounding the winter test tracks in a car heavily based on Button's 2006 mount, and reaped the reward of his development diligence with a car that obeyed his every command.

Super Aguri's practice performances were taken with a pinch of salt on Friday, but Davidson and team-mate Takuma Sato continued to excel in Saturday's free session - where the Briton took fourth best time - and qualifying, where Sato made it through to the final shoot-out and Davidson missed out by just one place.

"It was awesome," Davidson raved. "I felt really on top of the car and what I did in free practice continued on into qualifying."

Such was SAF1's improvement that Davidson was disappointed not to have joined his team-mate in the top ten.

"I was really enjoying it - and then I went off on my first attempt and lost a little bit of time," he reflected. "On my last run, I lost a lot of time in the last corner and didn't set a good lap, but my next two split times were better than Taku's, so I'm happy and really pleased for the team, but a little bit frustrated that I set my best time in free practice and not qualifying."

Button's frustration, meanwhile, centred on not being able to get the garishly-liveried 'Earth' car working to his satisfaction, let alone to the point where the top ten was even a consideration.

Fourteenth place meant last year's Hungarian GP winner narrowly avoided joining team-mate Rubens Barrichello in the bottom six, but he had little to offer those ahead of him in the second qualifying session.

"It hasn't been a good weekend for us so far," Button admitted. "Today, it was difficult to judge how hard to push the tyres - at the start of the lap, I was getting understeer because the tyres were not up to temperature then, later in the lap, I was getting oversteer as the rears were going off, which just shows the issues that we have.

"I got the best out of the car today and right now we are where we are. We'll obviously do what we can for the race, then we have some work to do to start addressing the issues we have identified."