BAR Honda reveal Sato miscue

Takuma Sato was running through the usual pre-grid program at the start of the British GP when he inadvertently pressed the engine kill switch on the BAR Honda's steering wheel, which explains why he had to be pushed to the pitlane after the others had started.

Sato was pushed to the pit-lane and eventually rejoined the race at the back of he field, which left him with a hard slog to catch up. His subsequent pace showed that he could have joined Jenson Button in the points. Sato was furious with himself afterwards, although the team played down his mistake.

"Obviously, steering wheels are fairly busy these days," said race engineer Jock Clear, "And it's a tense time of the race. There's a lot to do when you come up to the grid, with your tire warming and so on.

"Obviously, there are shrouds in place to make it particularly difficult to hit the kill switch, but ultimately it has to be somewhere close by, so you can hit it when you need it. Normally, it's for emergency use only, so it's an unfortunate error.

"He was just going through his start procedure. He realized what he'd done, so there wasn't any conversation really. There was no point in trying to deal with it at the time – we just had to get him back in the pit-lane and get it started as soon as possible and get it underway."