Honda officials must be nervously anticipating the results of an upcoming private test at the southern Spanish circuit Jerez.
The beleaguered Japanese squad will struggle on with the dreadful RA107 for at least one more race, but after Monaco a heavily revised chassis – described by some insiders as effectively a ‘B’ model – will be tried.
Rumours suggest that Honda is also about to follow McLaren’s lead by running the car on the long Menorca runway, to verify the performance of the new machine away from the wind tunnel.
The ‘B’ car could then debut at June’s Canadian grand prix, after some developments ran successfully on the existing RA107 at the recent Barcelona event, and others – such as revised sidepods – were tested last week in France.
“The car had a half of a second improvement,” Rubens Barrichello revealed, “and it is more stable on the brakes.”
In the press, much of the blame for Honda’s dire situation is falling on the shoulders of team boss Nick Fry and technical chief Shuhei Nakamoto, who replaced Geoff Willis last year despite notably lacking formula one experience.
“What he did have – and still has – is a firm friendship with Takeo Fukui, Honda’s president and CEO,” the British magazine F1 Racing observed, adding that Honda engineers openly describe Nakamoto as “out of his depth”.
