Australia: That was crap

Kylie and Danni
By Phil Huff
March 19 2007

The highlight of Honda Racing F1's Australian Grand Prix was a visit from sisters Kylie and Danni Minogue, along with a pre-season party at The Stokehouse in St Kilda. The race itself wasn't among the highlights.

From lowly grid positions, the heavily fuelled Jenson Button trundled around in 13th place, holding up his lighter team mate Rubens Barrichello. Once Rubens had got past, Felipe Massa followed, his faster Ferrari starting from the back thanks to an engine change.

Barrichello kept going, dragging the reluctant RA107 up to 11th by the end of the race, fortunately managing to beat Takuma Sato in the customer Super Aguri team. By 250 metres. Perhaps that's what he was referring to when he said "I feel like we had a competitive race today, even though I finished outside of the points." In fairness, Rubens ended the day jusy 9.037s outside of the top eight, so perhaps he has a point, if not a championship one.

Jenson faded further, his long first stint cut short in order to try and fix the handling problems he was facing. A call for more front wing at the pit stop was made but, thanks to some radio difficulties (it's always Australia, isn't it?) the call wasn't received, and Jenson carried on with no front end grip and an even heavier car.

To make matters worse, Jenson missed the pit lane entry line, crossing it slightly too fast and incurring a drive through penalty. This left him in 17th place, with one pit stop left to take.

"It wasn't a very good day," said Jenson, firmly grasping the concept of understatement. "We've got a test before the next race and we're going to need every second of it. Hopefully it was all crap today and will be all right in Malaysia."

Hopefully. The positive news is that the unusual aerodynamic issues affected just Jenson, and not Rubens. Related to the front wing, it could be a setup or manufacturing problem, but is unlikely to be a design issue. In theory, then, the problem can be solved simply by swapping the nose of the car for a spare.

The wider aerodynamic issues are more troublesome, but they're being addressed in the Sepang test next week. A raft of improvements will be made to the car, although all are scheduled developments, and not a panic measure being taken in response to the current level of performance.

If we can find half a second a lap, which is a huge, but achievable, chunk of time, then we'll be in a position to at least fight for points. Wins and podiums may be slightly further away than we'd hoped, but one thing's for sure...

The guys in Brackley, Bracknell and Tochigi aren't giving up yet.