Fry 'fed up' with Honda's poor starts

Honda Racing boss Nick Fry has admitted he is fed up with his team's poor starts to the season, despite the outfit showing they have the ability to recover

Since 2005, Honda have struggled to make an impression in the early part of the year, only to become stronger once their championship chances were gone.

In 2005, the team did not score a point until the 10th round of the season, while in 2006 they only started to fight for podium places regularly in the final part of the year.

This season, the team have again endured a dismal start, and only last Sunday they scored their first point, thanks to an eighth place finish from Jenson Button in France.

Fry admits it's unfortunate that Honda have been forced to show their ability to bounce back from poor starts.

"Hopefully what our team has unfortunately had to show is that we can keep going with developments throughout the year and I don't see any reason why we shouldn't do that again," said Fry.

"I'm fed up with having these terrible starts to the year and having to battle back - we make it hard for ourselves and we've really got to get out of the habit.

"That probably means we've got to work a lot harder from now until January next year, not only on developing this car but to make sure we put as much if not more effort into the development of next year's car."

Although last Sunday's result was far from what Honda's goals really are, Fry says the point was welcome, and he hopes it's the start of a return to form.

"On the one hand it's just a point, but on the other hand it's a starting point and it was earned through genuine performance," Fry added.

"When we went to Jerez test we were very pleased with changed mechanical parts and changed aero and we knew it was only worth a little on the short runs but it was a fairly major step forwards on the long runs.

"On Friday, we confirmed that so we weren't too worried about the qualifying perform ace. Now we've got to find a similar step again and we'll be back in the game."

Fry also admitted there was relief at the team after their first point of the year.

"A combination of relief and being pleased for the team," said Fry of his feeling after the result in France. "We worked incredibly hard for the past four or five months.

"At the beginning of the year when we realised that the car really wasn't what we wanted at all we had to change a lot and we did it in a very short period of time and had to take a few risks by doing things that we thought were right without too much science behind it.

"We're back on more of a level playing field and we can move forward from here."