“I can definitely feel that everyone wants to improve,” he underlined, “and they're putting a lot of manpower and effort in to do that. That's a very good sign.
“I already knew quite a few of the mechanics and engineers [before I arrived], and I didn't really need much time to settle in because I started working immediately with the team and car.
“The initial shakedown was quite good; usually on a first day you have little problems, but the car immediately ran for quite a lot of laps without anything strange happening. I think that gave us a very solid base to now try and extract the real potential of the car over the next tests.
“Apparently I'm the only driver in
Formula 1 history who has raced only for the top three British world championship-winning teams, but coming here there's nothing I've seen somewhere else which
Honda hasn't got. Just because they had one season last year which wasn't really that good, the years before that they were very good, so it's just a short recession and hopefully we can turn that around.
“We are not able to do that overnight – that's a fact, because the competition is far too big and hard in Formula 1 – but step-by-step, with the people we've got, I definitely think we can turn it around and bring Honda back to the top.”
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