F1 Honda, “Oh, We Got Trouble”
Oh, we got trouble
Right here in River City Brackley, Northamptonshire
Right here in River City Brackley, Northamptonshire
With a capital ‘T’ and that rhymes with ‘P’ and that stands for P ‘poor performance’
That stands for P poor performance
We surely got trouble
We surely got trouble
Right here in River City Brackley, Northamptonshire
Right here
Tempers are starting to flare at F1 Honda’s HQ in Brackley, UK. (Shinjuku Ward, Tokyo West?) A clear lack of pace by the RA107 in the first two championship events have set tongues to wagging.
Jenson Button this weekend revealed that team members have begun “shouting at each other”, while his veteran teammate Rubens Barrichello was spotted at Sepang in a moment of rare garage fury during a qualifying gaffe.
“Sometimes you just need to voice off some truths,” said the Brazilian, who described the Brackley based team’s error of not having the T-car adequately set up when he needed to use it at Sepang as “amateurish”.
Barrichello had to switch to the spare Honda on Saturday afternoon, and on Sunday finished the race a lap down.
Having previously identified braking instability as a main problem, he now explains that the Earth-liveried car is also terminally slow in a straight line - beaten for terminal pace in Malaysia even by satellite squad Super Aguri, who use an identical engine.
“(The car) acts like a parachute on the straights,” Barrichello told Radio Bandeirantes.
OUCH! That will leave a mark!
With all the hot air being expelled maybe thoughts should turn to converting the RA107 to utilize steam as its power source. It wouldn’t hurt.
Honda Racing boss Nick Fry, who’s smart enough not to take my advice, is said to be in talks to lure Ferrari’s former technical director Ross Brawn to the Honda squad as a long term solution.
It would be hard to argue against the move if it comes to pass but it wouldn’t do much for the here and now.
In the short term F1 Honda is said to be working on a modified RA107 - minus the “parachute” presumably - for the Canadian Grand Prix in an effort to improve its performance and turnaround their season. The Canadian GP is five events and 2 months from now so that effort is on the long side of short term.
In the meantime Jense will have to come up with a plan to regain his heart-throb status in the eyes of the Brolly Babes and UK’s female F1 fans who have defected to the Lewis Hamilton camp faster than… well, faster than a Honda RA107.
Honda F1, F1, Formula One, FIA, Sports, Auto Racing, Motorsports, Full Throttle
Since returning to F1 & the whole buy out BAR thing, I no longer think of Honda as a totally racing/engineering led company as it was in the Williams/McLaren 80’s era. Now it’s more of a marketing operation, & they can forget this Earth car livery bullshit……………..they didn’t land a sponsor for the car, just admit it & move on.
As for Jenson, shut up & lead the team like a #1 driver is meant to, you signed a long term contract to the team & accepted a fortune. Put your head down & do your job, I have no memory of Schui bitching at Ferrari in 96 when he arrived & the car was a dog. It took 5 seasons of hard work before Ferrari were rolling in podiums & championships. Jenson Button is a lot like this new era of Honda, all marketing & promotion & little substance….the dickhead!
Lewis Hamilton is taking no prisoners so far in 2007!
I had thought of adding a comment about the Google Earth livery - something like, Honda is as slow as the earth’s rotation - but frankly got tired and bored with the post.