Villeneuve Refuses to Get Excited about New BAR

Next year's British American Racing Formula One car boasts a new and more powerful Honda engine but Jacques Villeneuve is reserving judgement until the New Year.

"We will know in January what is possible with the car," said the Canadian former champion at the launch of the BAR004 on Tuesday. "Every other year we were hyper-positive even before Christmas and then we started testing and we were a little bit less positive.

"And then at the start of the season we ended up being disappointed so, this time, I want to wait until I sit in the car and be happily surprised."

Villeneuve took BAR's first ever podium this year but the team finished sixth overall after the Canadian had regularly expressed his frustration with the car. BAR's Australian director of engineering Malcolm Oastler said the new engine was "really the big significant change" technically for what he called a critical year for the team.

"It has allowed us to change the structure of the car a little bit, which will help us," he explained. "The car's quite refined now, very nicely integrated."

Major Boost

Oastler said the old car had been too slow and was hopeful the lighter RA002E engine, with a wider angle and lower centre of gravity, would be a major boost on a car with 90 percent completely new components.

"Through the development we did this season, we learned quite a lot and were able to incorporate quite a lot of changes into this car," he said.

Oastler added that there had been no agreement yet among teams about whether or not to limit the number of engines permitted for use during a race weekend. Teams currently use special qualifying engines for the Saturday session before reverting back to the more durable race ones.

"There has been some discussion amongst the engine suppliers, I believe, to try and avoid the cost of qualifying engines," said Oastler. "But quite how that's achieved is being discussed. One way would be to run the same engine all weekend but trying to implement those type of restrictions and regulate them is difficult.

"Pretty much every scheme you come up with has got some flaw in it somewhere."