Honda debut revised car at Jerez

The new car, which marks a change in the concept for the team as they adopt front and rear bargeboards as well as other aerodynamic improvements, was also briefly run with a new McLaren-style bridge wing across the nose in Spain today.

But despite the changes, the team are making it clear that the concepts are aimed more at understanding what they need to do for next year's car, rather than finding more speed for the final three races of the year.

Jenson Button, who is due to test the car for the first time in Jerez tomorrow, told autosport.com: "It's really just understanding a different way of working with aerodynamics. We're not expecting it to be any quicker.

"It might be more consistent and balance-wise it might be better, but you can't expect the team to turn the team around that quickly. All of the work is going into next year and, in a way, I'm quite surprised that extra work is going into this season."

Button has admitted that the continued troubles with the RA107, which has scored just two points this season, are taking the fun out of F1 for him.

"This car is horrible to drive and I don't enjoy coming to the races at the moment," he explained. "Driving the car is the bad bit, everything else is fun. I'd rather put up with that and have a good car next year - and we definitely will have a better car next year.

"We'll quickly be able to feel the differences when we test the car in Jerez. The problem for us now is that we're very slow in a straight line and when we get to a corner then we haven't got any downforce. So it can't be worse."

Honda Racing's engineering director Jacky Eeckelaert said about the changes: "We're investing in the future.

"We should have a fairly good idea what's working after testing in Jerez. But the work we've done recently in the tunnel seems to have reasonably good correlation with the track.

"So it's not risky - besides, we can only learn, and where we stand in the championship means it's not a great risk."