Oliver White
Both Super Aguri and Scuderia Toro Rosso may have to wait until after the new 2008 season has begun before they can race their new cars, possibly even leaving it as late as the start of the European leg. Both teams are owned by other entrants, Honda and Red Bull respectively, and the logistics of turning out two teams worth of cars is proving problematic. If the rules permit, the teams would like to run identical chassis as the parent team, but Red Bull want to maximise development time by signing off on the RBR4 late, and Honda are starting from scratch following their disastrous attempt with the current RA107.
The delay means that both respective teams can work on different areas of development over the off-season, and Honda have stated that most of their work will revolve around the standard McLaren ECU.
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.
We’ll 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 [current] car. It’s not too responsive to treatment. We’ve worked with this car enough now to know that we can’t learn much more from this concept. Nick Fry, Honda.
At the moment it looks easier to start next year with this year’s model. We are reviewing the situation for next year right now, but we are not yet 100 percent certain what we will do. Franz Tost, STR.
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