Like me, I’m sure you’re also surprised by the underachieving Honda F1 team. I mean, they have two talented drivers in Rubens Barrichello and Jenson Button and they have been in the sport for as long as we can remember. But they are currently being pushed to the back of the pack.
If you can remember, which I’m sure you do, the Barrichello I’m talking about is that driver from Brazil, the protégé of the late and great (in no particular order) Ayrton Senna. We have seen this man show his driving prowess at Scuderia but failed he to shine because Todt allowed Schumi to upstage his teammate. The infamous 2002 Austrian Grand Prix was proof of that. It was early in the season yet when Todt told Barrichello to let Schumi take the win, what a travesty that was.
Anyway, this Barrichello recently said on his official website that the most probable cause of their car’s lack of speed is a faulty wind tunnel. His exact words were: “They believe that our wind tunnel’s calibration is wrong and because of that everything that has been developed has not been effective. We will have to change many things, even parts of the structure inside the wind tunnel, and it will be about a month until we are able to see changes.”
The ‘they’ Barrichello was talking about were the guys at Honda’s UK headquarters who are in charged of testing the design of their cars. Barrichello recently visited the headquarters in Brackley and there, the team’s technical staff revealed to him that they suspect an error in the calibration of the wind tunnel.
The trip was taken by the Brazilian after his toughest race of the season. The grizzled veteran of the tracks found himself staring at the backend of Adrian Sutil’s Spyker car. That kind of performance for their cars has been consistent throughout this season. I just hope that they would fix the problem with their wind tunnel and hopefully get back with a competitive car before the end of the season.
Barrichello said: “The best thing is that for us to be sure that next year’s car will be good we need to change this year’s car to know if the changes are going in the right direction. I’m sure they are, they have to be!”
It can be remembered that his teammate Button said that he will quit if he does not win a race with Honda. With this development, maybe Button will have to continue racing then.