Aguri set to have to wait for 2008 car

After a disastrous year with the RA107, Honda are starting with a clean sheet of paper for their design of next year's challenger as they adopt a new concept.

And with the amount of effort the team are putting into getting the design of the car right, it means there may not be enough time and capabilities to get cars ready for both Honda Racing and Super Aguri by the start of the season.

Team boss Nick Fry said: "We won't share cars in winter testing. If the rules allow it, the objective would be for Super Aguri to have the same car as us next year. But that probably wouldn't be from round one - purely because the logistics just don't work.

"Even though we have substantial manufacturing capability, to turn out two teams' worth of cars in time for round one just would not be possible. Consequently, the cars that we test between now and the end of the year will be different. They'll be doing things differently from us."

With Honda now admitting that there is little they can do to improve the RA107, it means the focus of winter testing this year will shift towards new electronic systems.

"The programme for the rest of this year will mainly be working with the McLaren ECU," said Fry. "We've worked with this car enough now to know that we can't learn much more from this concept.

"We'll spend the rest of the year giving some time to some of our younger drivers, working on the McLaren ECU - but not continuing to develop this car. It's not too responsive to treatment.

"We've got models in the wind tunnel of the new car and have had for some weeks. And obviously the CFD is going strong with our new computer.

"We haven't made a big fuss about it but like most of the other teams, we've invested heavily in CFD and the new equipment is also running. We're satisfied with progress for next year - but we've got 20 weeks to do a huge amount of work."