Analysis: Honda goes back to the future

Okay so they are only back-to-back testing them against their '08 bikes in practice, but if the '07 chassis is quicker and they decided to race it, Honda would effectively be shelving 5000kms of testing over the winter.

It would be very "un-Honda" for them to set a project aside and humbly re-assign a bike that had already been consigned to the museum, but it would also signal an intent to be competitive on the racetrack no matter the circumstance, or how much pride it would cost.

What seems odd to some of us in the paddock is that since Dani Pedrosa flew on the 2008-spec Honda V4 on the first day of testing at Sepang on January 22, before he crashed late in the day and broke his hand, that bike, with its pneumatic-valved cylinder head, has never quite clicked as a package.

"It needs to be more reliable," said Honda's 2006 world champion Nicky Hayden on Thursday.

But even when the American has got the bike running in testing, it has never been a match for the Ducati, the Yamaha, or even the privateer '07 Hondas.

The mystery of all this is why that's the case? Honda's knowledge of air valve technology is vast, so why can't it transfer that pneumatic valve knowledge through crossover from other parts of the company instead of constantly rotating the knowledge in keeping with the Honda Company philosophy, which encourages rotation of staff within the various areas of the Honda business?

But this new shift in thinking from Honda's new management in Moto GP - including a big cheese from the Honda mountain bike department - may signal a more direct and purposeful win-at-all-costs direction for the team.

The employees at Honda are full of passion for motorcycle racing. Just as the riders, the mechanics and even us fans are. People work at Ferrari and Ducati because they are heartfelt, consuming, religious places for Italian engineers.

People work at Williams because they believe in Sir Frank, and people work at KTM because they are passionate about Austria and enjoy being the underdogs fighting through the might of the establishment.

The people at Repsol Honda are working to their wits end down in the Qatar garages, but there have been signs of frustration and the fact that you sense exactly-what-they-are-not-saying indicates they are running out of patience with the current lack of results.

The satellite Honda team engineers have there own concerns. Now that the 2007 Repsol bikes have arrived in Qatar, does this mean that their Gresini, JiR or LCR bikes may not go as fast as they thought they would?

Will a 2007 Gresini Honda be able to blast past a 2008 Repsol Honda just as it did during the Phillip Island test just over a month ago? Will Honda let them go so fast?

Meanwhile, the Ducati steamroller is about to be unleashed and the Yamahas of Jorge Lorenzo, James Toseland and Colin Edwards will very easily slot into a hole if Casey Stoner hits trouble.

Regardless of the fate of its 2007 bikes this weekend, Honda must get that pneumatic engine going quickly in order to put a smile back on the face of Hayden, who slogged his guts out heroically throughout 2006 en route to the title.

Honda's stoic refusal to budge from its gameplan may have worked for them in the past, and that would be their public stance. But as things stand, with the current uncompetitive state of their F1 team and the lack of MotoGP wins, dusting off of some old 2007 Repsol Hondas, that were rocketships at the close of last season, may just be the smartest thing they've done in ages.