By Phil Huff (05/06/2003)
June 5 2003

Lucky Strike BAR Honda will start the 2004 season racing the current model, in a bid to capitalise on high reliability. No, really. Next season starts with four long haul races (Australia, Malaysia, Bahrain and Brazil) and BAR's technical bosses have decided to delay the introduction of the BAR006 until the start of the European season, according to Autosport.

Geoff Willis, the teams Technical Director, said: "We will be running next year's engine quite early and there are quite a lot of developments on the car we want to run early, but we will probably take a leaf out of McLaren's and Ferrari's books.

"We have got quite a big step on the mechanical engine-transmission side, so the old car will have an aero upgrade

I'm not sure what we will call this version of the car (BAR005A anyone?), but we will introduce the completely new car for Europe."

Considering that BAR have suffered numerous mechanical failures this year, both in testing and more importantly at the races, this seems like a bold move.