"Formula One has to move in a more environmentally friendly direction," explained Fry to RealHondaF1.com before today's launch. "This is something that Max Moseley has, rightly, been very keen on, because the days where engines run on 1300 horse power and special fuels are gone.

"It was a very selfish view that we inside Formula One might have had great fun, but car companies are not going to invest significant amounts of money unless its relevant to what they’re doing in their road cars," continued the Honda team boss. "People, especially in an environmentally sensitive global situation frankly are not going to put up with Formula one unless we move with the times.

"It’s nice to look backwards, and we all had great fun in those days, but unless we do change in this direction then Max and I think all the teams are aware that we’re not going to be around for long."

So the team are going to change, but how will that manifest itself?

"We’re all very much behind the changes in 2009 and 2010 towards energy recovery systems, and that’s the big contribution that Formula One can make.

"I’ll give you the perfect example: these things decelerate from 200mph to 50mph in a couple of seconds. The amount of energy dissipated is huge. What we’re trying to do is capture that energy in a couple of seconds, store it in a capacitor of some kind, and then use it later in the lap to accelerate out of the corners.

"Now, today in a hybrid road car it does pretty much that, but it does it in a much more controlled situation. Deceleration is much less, in fact it’s a fairly inefficient system and it weighs a lot. In 2009 we are going to have to do that with a unit that weighs 20 kilos or less.

"If it was in a road car situation, it might be an R&D project that goes on for five or so years, so by chucking extremely motivated formula one engineers its much more likely to be developed that much more quickly and then it can go on to a road car.

"Unless we do that, as I said earlier, frankly we will be dinosaurs."

So it's energy recovery systems, mainly. These systems, as Nick explained, take many years to develop, but the ideas for the rules were only revealed relatively recently. RealHondaF1.com wanted to know if Honda have been working on a project to get a head start?

"Well, the so-called KERS system, which is the Kinetic Energy Recovery System, has been worked on for about the last year," says Fry. "We’ve got to be racing it in 2009, that means we’re going to have to be testing it next year, so this year will be the development phase but, you know, that’s just the thin end of the wedge.

"The second big job is that in 2010 we’re going to be required to do energy recovery systems, and then in 2011 there’s going to be an all-new power plant. It’s all going to go in the same direction. It’s the only way for Formula One to survive. It’s not going to survive if it just carries on doing things that are great for 20 Formula One cars, but no good for anyone else.

"We’re quite happy to talk about things that genuinely save money, genuinely contribute towards road cars or, in our case, we can look more broadly than road cars; Honda’s got a high-efficiency jet, there’s lawnmowers, leaf blowers, robots, where there might be a relevance. We’re in a better position than some of the other Formula One teams because we can look more broadly. Generally, in terms of direction, we’re very much at one with the FIA."

That's all right then.

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