The disappearance of Honda’s infamous ‘earth car’ does not mean the Japanese team has abandoned the concept, according to a spokesperson.
As post-season testing commenced at the Circuit de Catalunya on Tuesday, young testers Andreas Zuber and James Rossiter emerged on track in plain white RA107 contenders.
Brackley based Honda spent the 2007 season, in which the team managed a meagre total of just six points, racing the innovative ‘earth car’ livery; essentially a giant aerial satellite image of the globe devoid of all sponsor logos.
But the outfit was slammed for hypocrisy by pedalling an environmental message whilst racing in formula one to sell millions of polluting road cars.
“We always use an interim livery in the winter,” a team representative, playing down the significance of the ‘earth car’ absence in Spain this week, is quoted as saying by the Dutch magazine Formule 1 Race Report.
“We are currently hard at work on preparing to lift the environmental concept to the next level, not only for next season, but for the longer term as well,” the spokesperson reportedly added.
A statement issued by Honda on Tuesday clarified that the plain white livery in use in Barcelona testing is actually Honda’s famous ‘Championship White’.
The team’s former marketing director Alistair Watkins left Honda in 2007, and his successor David Butler’s first challenge is to build on the ‘earth car’ concept, Honda revealed earlier this year.
