BAR confident of wins in 2006

The team, now fully owned by Honda, endured a disappointing 2005 after having finished in second place behind Ferrari in last year's Constructors' Championship.

But team boss Nick Fry has already said the Brackley-based squad are targeting to win more than one race in 2006. The team are yet to score a win in seven seasons.

But Taylor believes they can achieve their goals if the new car is fast from the start of the season.

"I'd say we're pretty confident," said Taylor. "We've done a lot of evaluation and set ourselves tough targets designed to put us into a position of being capable of winning races right from the outset. If we hit those targets, I'm sure we'll be right on the button.

"The key is for us to deliver a quick car from right day one - then we can concentrate on fine-tuning the general level of performance. I think BAR has proved itself capable of out-developing anybody on the grid - consistently during the past three seasons we've progressed from our starting point as quickly as anyone else.

"So, if we can hit the ground running in 2006, I'm confident we'll be in a position to win races."

Taylor said the new BAR is expected to make its track debut some time in January.

The car's design and development will be heavily influenced by Honda's engineers now the Japanese manufacturer will race under its own name.

"We've have been integrating Honda staff for some time within the design team which has proved useful and helped us to bridge the gap between what's a primarily European organisation based in Britain and a Japanese parent company," Taylor added.

"We also have been running several joint-development projects that have been worked on both in the UK and in Japan. Honda engineers have been instrumental in key parts of the 2005 car and I'm sure this process will keep expanding.

"From my point of view, I've now got many more engineers at my disposal and that will allow us to run a lot more projects concurrently which must improve the speed of our development programmes. Honda also, of course, has a massive R and D department, which I'm sure is working on various 'blue sky' technologies.

"Many of these are probably well outside the current remit of what we'd consider for a Formula One car but that's not say that they won't be relevant at some time in the future. Who's to say in years to come we won't have hybrid fuel cell technology in F1?"

Despite the late announcement of new rules for 2006, Taylor is also confident the new car design is progressing "reasonably well.

"Though the process hasn't been helped by the FIA throwing in some late curve balls which obviously have a direct impact on the car," he added.

"It's fair to say that we weren't as good as some of our competitors when it came to tyre performance over a race distance last season.

"So that was an area that we particularly focus on with the new car, and then the rules change, and now, with regards to tyre longevity, we're back closer to where we were in 2004 when we were very competitive."