If I may paraphrase Rudyard Kipling... 'if you can keep your head while all around you are losing theirs, chances are you haven't heard the news'.
It would be both cruel and inaccurate to say that the Honda
F1 team was left in a shell-shocked state of denial after their appallingly disappointing British Grand Prix at
Silverstone but, by the same token, it would be wrong to underestimate the mountain they still have to climb if they're ever going to be in a position to deliver
Jenson Button a car capable of winning races.
Of course, it's easy to be wise as a journalist sitting on the touchlines - and I fancy the Honda management is just getting the tiniest bit bored reading and listening to comments from the media - yet one does inevitably find oneself wondering precisely where the team's technical shortfall really lies. Is there something specific they are doing wrong? Is the Honda RA106 a fundamentally bad chassis? Are the V8 engines just not good enough? Are the drivers letting everybody down? Just
what the hell is going on here?
Engines? Difficult to believe that
Honda's engines are useless, although, as we've seen this year so far, they are by no means bullet-proof. But it will be interesting to hear
precisely why Jenson's engine dumped all its lubricant over his rear tyres, sending him into ignominious retirement in a gravel trap.
So what about the chassis? Well, it may be stiff, light and suitably robust, but was its early season inability to get the best out of its tyres solely a function of the fact that the team's full-sized wind tunnel had yet to come on song yet?
