Brawn: no pressure to fix Honda quickly

Honda have been racing under their own name since 2006, when they enjoyed a promising year, scoring one win on their way to fourth place in the standings.

Last season, however, the Brackley-based squad scored just six points with the ill-handling RA107 car.

And although Honda are aiming to bounce back this year, Brawn says there are no deadlines from Japan to turn their fortunes around immediately.

"As long as there's a sensible argument, they will support the right strategy for the future," Brawn told reporters at the launch of the new car.

"They're not interested in short-term face-saving solutions - Honda's a strong company and are obviously very disappointed about what happened in 2007 and want to see some progress in 2008.

"But from my discussions they want to see step-by-step progress and the team going in the right direction. There's no deadline. We'll change things and if they see progress over the next few years they'll be happy."

Honda's new car, the RA108, made its track debut last week at Valencia, with Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello happy with the initial impressions.

Brawn said the test, where the team set unimpressive times, was not significant of the car's true form, but he admitted the early signs were encouraging.

"It's difficult to know what to expect as that particular car was a collection of bits that had never been run in the wind tunnel," he said. "Because we had to pick a point last November when parts were frozen. So the car we ran in Valencia had never been run as a collection of parts in the wind tunnel.

"It was a combination of wings and bits and pieces which we didn't know about. We've got some extra bits on the car for Barcelona and by then, we'll have the bits on the car that have all been in the wind tunnel. So I don't think you can read anything into Valencia.

"What was encouraging was the car looked far more stable than the old car, I went out to have a look on the circuit. And while the old car had quite a reasonable level of downforce, it was very pitch sensitive and difficult to drive.

"This car looked nice and stable - the early signs are encouraging but we've still got to introduce the downforce and aero performance and start to see what the laptimes are like."