China: Fry on F1, the past, the future, and Brawn

By Phil Huff
September 29 2006

Honda Racing F1's team chief sat down with the press in today's Friday Five conference, and talked about the state of F1, how good we are, how tough all those hospitality gigs are, and when Ross Brawn starts at Honda...

Nick, we are quite used to getting a Suzuka-spec engine from Honda, are we going to get that?

No, it's not here [in China]. We are using the same engine that we used at the last race. The ones that we had some problems with on Friday in Monza, a version of that engine will be the one we run at Suzuka and subsequently in Brazil. In fact the problems we found at Monza were more related to manufacturing and build issues.

It wasn't anything to do with the so-called Stage Four developments that we had in place, so the so-called Stage Four engines ran reliably at Jerez in the couple of tests we've done since then, did more than the 1500 kilometres that we usually require so we will be going forward in Japan with that specification and that's the engine that will start the freeze process for the next couple of years.

What is the challenge of these two back-to-back races, particularly with Suzuka coming up?

I think from a logistics point of view we are well-versed in back-to-back races. I think for us, it's more dealing with the number of guests we have. Obviously here, with 555 sponsorship on the car, we've got a substantial number of guests with us. In Japan, clearly with the Honda and other Japanese sponsors that we've got, there's a lot of people there, and in Brazil it will be British American Tobacco's or Lucky Strike's last race so it's the end of an era, so we have a large number of people there, so our concerns are more handling that side of it rather than the logistics of running the car.

It's been a season of ups and downs for you. Looking back, early on, a bit disappointing then latterly, of course, more competitive. What have you learned from this year?

I think this year, in fact, has been the best year that our team has had. Clearly 2004 was better from a results' point of view but I think that was probably as much to do with other people not having a good season rather than particular brilliance on our part, when we look back.

I think this year we have understood a lot more about how the car works, delivering the full size wind tunnel ahead of time and in fact getting it calibrated and working in a very satisfactory way and in a very short period of time has been a huge achievement and our improvement over the last few races is really down to using that piece of equipment effectively, so I think we now know a lot more technically that we did before. Winning the race in Hungary was an obvious bonus but based on the knowledge that we've now got we can continue to progress.

What you think of the 30,000 kilometres testing limit?

I think we need to have an agreement on testing and we were successful in agreeing something between all the teams last year and I am sure we can do the same this year. I along with everyone else agreed to 30,000 kilometres and I take it that if that is what we agreed to in concept then that is what we are going to stick to and now we only have to fill out the details and that needs more dialogue with Bridgestone because there is obviously a large logistical task to support a number of teams.

The bottom line is that we support an agreement and I am sure we can hammer something out that suits everybody.

How much will Formula One change without Schumacher and who will be the dominant driver for the next 10 or 12 years? Will there be a new star?

Formula One is big enough and strong enough not to depend on any one person whether it be us, or any one driver. I think it relies on the strength of the show and now that we have some of the technical things agreed I think the major task for the next 12 months is to continue to improve it and there were some good signs from the FIA survey that things like the change to qualifying had improved the situation and now we have to build on that. I think that all the drivers can be the 'star'.

I think there are enough coming up through the system from enough different nationalities that what we need to do is make each of them a star by improving accessibility to them. I think we have got to do a lot more to improve the show.

From our side, I think we should think about making some things more compulsory; for example, in other formulas I have worked in, drivers and team members have been required to be in the pit during pit lane walkabout -- and some of the promoters now are putting on very good events during the evenings and maybe it should be mandatory to attend those.

[Also] interviews on the grid and dedicated media time, like they have in rallying, I think that if we can put in place some of those things we can work with all of the drivers to make them all big stars around the world as a whole and I think that is what we need to work on.

Do you have a starting date for Ross Brawn at Honda?

I am intrigued by that one! Apart from chatting socially with Ross we have had no contact on a professional basis so you can put that one firmly to bed.