Honda could field an all-British driver pairing in the 2009
Formula 1 World Championship, with
Jenson Button waxing lyrical about the squad's potential for the future and Mike Conway staking his claim to promotion from the test team to the racing line-up.
Button may have scored just three points thus far in 2008, but that is still three more than he had notched up at this point last year, as
Honda's recalcitrant and unloved RA107 proved to be nigh-on impossible to handle for either the Briton or team-mate
Rubens Barrichello.
Following a dispiriting start to winter testing with the new RA108, however, the Brackley-based concern – now under the guidance of new team principal and former
Ferrari technical guru Ross Brawn – has made significant in-roads into the opposition, to the extent that Button was able to qualify ninth in Bahrain and race to sixth place three weeks later in Spain.
Indeed, the 28-year-old has an average starting position so far of 11.8, compared to 14 at the same stage of proceedings in 2007, and he insists he is already feeling ‘much better' about things than he did twelve months ago.
“It's not so much about the results, which are not great yet,” he urged in an interview with German publication
Auto Motor und Sport. “It's that the general feeling has improved.
“We are making progress at every race. The team was good in the first place, but it has been strengthened with the right people.
“I would not have wanted it to stay like last year. I said to [Honda CEO Takeo] Fukui-san that something had to change. I put on the pressure that we should get Ross on-board, and the reaction showed me that my opinion is taken seriously.
“When it was official that Ross had signed, I don't think there was one person in the team who was not enthusiastic. Everyone thought ‘this is the turning point'. Now I feel that it is worth it to wait.”
