It seems Super Aguri may have to be patient and wait before they can get their hands on their 2008 car.
Honda have had an abysmal year with their RA107 and their contender for 2008 will be totally new, starting with a fresh sheet of paper and new concepts. The team are putting as much effort as they can into the design of the 2008 car however it does mean that they may struggle to get the cars for both Honda and Super Aguri ready by the start of the 2008 season. As Super Aguri are the customer car, it is likely that if there are delays, it will be Super Aguri who will be forced to start the season in their 2007 car.
“We won t share cars in winter testing,†Honda team boss Nick Fry explained. “If the rules allow it, the objective would be for Super Aguri to have the same car as us next year. But that probably wouldn’t be from round one – purely because the logistics just don’t work.
“Even though we have substantial manufacturing capability, to turn out two teams’ worth of cars in time for round one just would not be possible. Consequently, the cars that we test between now and the end of the year will be different. They’ll be doing things differently from us.
“The programme for the rest of this year will mainly be working with the McLaren ECU. We have worked with this car enough now to know that we can’t learn much more from this concept. We will spend the rest of the year giving some time to some of our younger drivers, working on the McLaren ECU but not continuing to develop this car. It’s not too responsive to treatment.
“We have got models in the wind tunnel of the new car and have had for some weeks. And obviously the CFD is going strong with our new computer. We haven’t made a big fuss about it but like most of the other teams – we’ve invested heavily in CFD and the new equipment is also running. We’re satisfied with progress for next year but we’ve got 20 weeks to do a huge amount of work.”
