Ross Brawn has emerged into the light to give fans of his Honda team an insight into what they might expect from the new racing season.
The team maintained an unaccustomed silence throughout much of winter testing, issuing few daily statements on its progress – these are routinely issued by all teams.
And, when it did release an end-of-session summary it stuck strictly to factual information, giving no commentary whatsoever about how the team felt its preparations for the new season had gone.
Well, that’s all over now. Brawn, the new team principal, has broken his silence with a preview of the Australian Grand Prix, in which he said that fans can expect progress one step at a time from a team that enjoys his full faith.
Speaking about pre-season testing, he said: “We’ve made steady progress with the RA108 since its launch at the end of January. Practically all of the aerodynamic and mechanical parts have been updated and when we ran our Melbourne-spec package for the first time last week, we saw some positive changes to the performance of the car.
“We now have to see what that improvement equates to on the race track and relative to the competition.”
Long-suffering driver Jenson Button added: “It’s a very driveable car, which gives us a good basis to build on. It still lacks a bit of speed, but we’ve made improvements at every test in many areas and I’m confident that this level of development can continue throughout the year.”
Talking about his preparations for the new season, he said: “Like all of the drivers, I’ve been busy with testing the new car and there’s no substitute for that kind of training.
“But I’ve also been working on my fitness away from the track and I’m fitter now than ever before. I’ve got a new physio, Mike Collier, and we’ve done three training camps together in Lanzarote.”
Lanzarote? Not a bad life, is it, Jense? Beats Brackley, that’s for sure…
Naturally we wish him all the best for the season to come and look forward to seeing a few steps forward from Honda coming to light at Melbourne.