BAR guns for home win

Richards admitted to a little disappointment that BAR was not stronger than Jenson Button's fifth place in France on Sunday, but said: "we are not beside ourselves when we look at who was behind us."

Renault, he pointed out, was on its home turf, and he hopes that BAR can use Silverstone to similar effect.

"Home teams always play better on their home pitch, don't they?" he said. "We are going to Silverstone next weekend and that is not Ferrari's home pitch either. I don't expect it to have a negative effect on Michael but a positive effect on our entire organisation

"The psychology of the whole business is a very significant part. The whole factory is going to be involved next week, there's a lot of momentum and I feel very confident. The whole thing will be very positive, from the Regent Street initiative on Tuesday right through the rest of the week."

Richards admitted, meanwhile, that the engine failures, almost exclusively the province of Takuma Sato, have got the team baffled. The only things Sato appears to do differently to Button is change down later but, logically, that should stress an engine less, not more.

"We have to get Taku to the finish and work out what's going on with him," Richards said. "That's the major issue and there's a lot of head-scratching going on at Honda about it. It's costing us dearly, all the time. If I look back now, six races would have brought a big tally of points. We don't seem to be able to analyse the problem, which is quite extraordinary given all the data we've got and the massive intellect we employ between Honda and ourselves.

"It's the key to the second half of the year for us. I spoke to Honda about it today and they are a very proud company and it's a very big issue for them to address."