By Phil Huff
July 29 2005

BAR Honda's Geoffrey Willis sat in on the Friday Five press conference today, telling the press at the Hungaroring about the 2006 V8 engines, Jenson Button, Honda, aerodynamics and much more. Could you give us some sort of idea of progress with V8 engines and/or V8-engined chassis? How are things going – just some sort of indication.

Well, we’ve been working on the V8 for some eight months now, and Honda are very advanced on that programme. As you probably know, we had the V8 in a test chassis in Mugello earlier this year. That was the first prototype; we have a number of steps of prototypes evolving towards the final race spec. They are already on the dyno, several stages and like many people we will be testing the V8 again on the track at the beginning of the winter testing in an intermediate chassis. On the chassis side, there are a number of changes to the overall layout of the car with a much shorter engine, but that said, (it is a) normal chassis design schedule and we are quite a long way through that already.

Geoff, what are your feelings about the Button situation?

Well, it’s no great secret that BAR Honda really would like Jenson to drive for us next year. But clearly Jenson has got contractual issues with Williams which is something that he has to sort out himself and there’s really nothing much more that BAR Honda or I can say on that at the moment.

Another little story that’s come out today is that you could have a special engine in China, not the Suzuka Special, but a special Special as it is a one-off race. What can you tell us about that?

For certain, the Honda Engine Group will be pushing hard all year and it is, again, very much of a tradition to try to end the year in Suzuka on a high and due to the timing of the races we do have the option for another one-race engine at the end of the year. I think some of the figures of a 1000 horsepower bandied around are somewhat fanciful but I’m sure Honda will carry on, as they have done all year, making small but steady steps all the way through the year.

So you’re expecting something a bit special for the last race.

Every pair of races we get another bit of engine development, steady development from engine to engine and I am sure we will be quicker at the end of the year than we are now.

You are setting out to design cars for next year but we don’t know what the qualifying regulations are yet. Can you explain how you are going to do that?

Good question, because it does actually make a difference, it’s surprising how inter-related the sporting and technical regulations are and specifically the change in qualifying. Well, the discussions about the possible low fuel qualifying will tend to change the normal strategies the teams will want to use. Even a proposal to lower the pit lane speed limit during the races will have an effect on strategies and at the moment, most teams will be having to commit to their chassis geometry, if not already, certainly within the next month or so and so it does make it difficult with the sporting regulations unknown and people will have to take their own stab at what’s the right thing, a trade-off between not having enough fuel capacity to take the sort of strategies that you will want to do next year or, if the regulations don’t change in that direction, the penalty of having a slightly heavier chassis and a slightly longer chassis or wider chassis than you might want so it is difficult. It’s always a problem to try and change the sporting regulations independently of the technical regulations.

So in short, you need a decision when? In the next month?

Last month would have been fine. I think the judgement, everyone has taken it, because everyone has started the new chassis and if someone has tried to do something they think will happen and get it wrong they will have to pay the penalty. But I think everyone will be included in the discussion on the changes of the qualifying format and the race format and have to voice his opinion. I think we have to wait and see what comes out and if someone has taken some risk then maybe he loses out, but it is again judgement.

Can I ask about your world speed record attempt with a special engine, chassis and aerodynamics. Can you give any details?

Not very much right now. There will be some announcement a little bit later, but it is a project we are looking at slightly outside normal Formula One work, but we will be able to give more details later.

What do you do with the extra space at the back with the V8 engine? Will we see shorter wheelbase, will we see space, will we have a longer fuel tank, what is the direction?

You have certainly correctly identified a number of the options for it. It is an interesting one because the one other big change with the new engine rules is that there is a limitation on the minimum engine weight and also a limitation on the minimum centre of gravity height, which means we are not suddenly going to see a big step in chassis-side performance from the very much smaller V8 engine. There are a number of different options. The aerodynamic regulations are only changing very slightly for next year, so you will see a lot of the concepts being refined from this year to next year and I am sure a lot of the teams are right at this moment making those decisions, or probably have made those decisions, on what they are going to do with the 90mm or so that they are now going to have free. Some may have shorter rear ends, some may have slightly longer gearboxes. It will depend on their design philosophy and what they feel they need to focus on for their car’s performance improvement.

How are you dealing with Taku and the difficult season he is having?

It is very important for the team’s aspirations that we have two drivers capable of getting in the points at every race, getting on the podium at every race, and I think this year has been a bit difficult for Takuma to be able to show that. The first half has not been the easiest season and so what we need to do is to make sure we give the right tools to Takuma for the second half of the season. Fundamentally we are not going to change what we do but we need to make sure we are completely reliable all the time, not just in the race but during the sessions. It is just a matter of being professional and trying to give both our drivers the best possible car they can get.

The car specification you had in Hockenheim, now we come here it is much hotter, did you make any modification to cool the driver down?

Nothing specific for this event. We have had a very hot race earlier in the season in Bahrain and last week we were in Jerez in similar very hot conditions and we have been working on driver comfort to make sure that they can operate, particularly in tests on very long days of 700-plus kilometres. It is a tough environment, the drivers are now quite well acclimatised to it, we are probably looking at the next race being even hotter and we may have to do something a little bit different there.

I was slightly concerned to hear you talking about aerodynamics pretty much staying as they are for next year and Martin you talked about entertainment. We saw Kimi Raikkonen the front of his car washing away going through Stowe trying to follow Michael Schumacher and drivers have talked about the problems. Hockenheim is a circuit that normally has fantastic overtaking, and so does Silverstone, but it was tough for all of them. Now, you get a lot of aerodynamics back by going higher and all the protrusions. The drivers are telling us that gives even more turbulence when they are following, so surely you are going to have to make dramatic changes to aero for next year, not just so you can overtake but so you can entertain people.

Well, if any technical regulation changes were to be made at this stage of the year they would have to be made with the unanimous agreement of all the teams, I understand. It is quite late to make a big change. It is true that when we discussed the ways of controlling the performance of the cars and we chose the raised front wing, we didn’t expect to make the ability of one car to follow the other noticeably worse. Perhaps that shows that it would have been wiser to have done some more tests before we went in that direction. I think all the teams have learned a lot about the effect of this regulation change. As you can see some teams did a better job early on than others and all the teams are improving, so I am sure that next year the cars will naturally be better at following the other cars because some of the problems associated with following other cars are also problems that the cars suffer in free air, so it will get a bit better, but it would be wrong to suddenly try to make a change at this stage without having done the work to work out what is the right way to go.