Honda plan full-scale attack on testing

The Japanese manufacturer were the first team to divert their efforts away from their 2008 campaign and onto next year's car - with Brawn keen to make the most of the opportunities handed to the team by a raft of regulation changes.

And as well as the early work on the new car, Brawn has said that the team have saved as much testing mileage and as many tyres as they could to ensure they can undertake a full winter schedule of running before Christmas.

"We've kept our testing mileage and our tyres for the winter testing, which is another thing that is reflected (by our performance) this season," explained Brawn.

"I believe we have more tyres left for winter testing than any other team, which is something we consciously did because of our approach.

"We will be doing all three winter tests and there will be KERS work being done, work with the tyres, and work with some of the aerodynamic pieces for next year. We have got a full test over the winter with a whole myriad of parts."

Brawn expects Honda's RA109 to be launched in early January, with a major update to the car scheduled to be introduced in time for the season-opening Australian Grand Prix in late March.

"I think in common with all the teams we will have an early version and a late version," he explained.

"With the first race not being until later in March we will have the launch car, and none of us will want to reveal all of our secrets in January. So there will be the B-version coming out before the season starts."