Interview with Nick Fry

A fourth place for Jenson Button in Germany went some way to relieving the pressure at Honda after a disastrous run of late, although the fact that Rubens Barrichello's race ended in another early smoky retirement gave more cause for concern. Incredibly, Button had not been in the points since finishing sixth in Spain, and the only score for the team in the previous four races was a similar result for Barrichello in the high attrition race at Indianapolis.

Considering the pre-season optimism surrounding the team, those results were not much to get excited about, but at least things seem to be going in the right direction. However, Hockenheim has favoured Button in recent years, and it remains to be seen if the boost in form is carried over into future races.

Several weeks have now passed since technical director Geoff Willis went on gardening leave after apparently being targeted as the scapegoat for the team's problems when Tokyo demanded answers. Interestingly, sources around the team say that now the dust has settled, the atmosphere in the technical department is good.

Although not an F1 specialist, new boss Shuhei Nakamoto is a typical Honda racer, and has contributed to the company's successes on two wheels. There have been suggestions that Willis was "holding the team back," in that he had an innately conservative approach to rushing innovations into action. Nakamoto has apparently given his staff free reign to come up with new things.

Willis had to carry a lot of the responsibility for last year's Imola fuel tank saga, and since then the team have had to be 'squeaky clean', in the words of boss Nick Fry - they could not afford to get involved in controversies of the sort that Renault are now embroiled in (although, like many others, Honda had pursued the mass damping route). This desire, not to sail too close to the wind when exploiting the rules, also explains why Honda led the push for the FIA's clamp down on the flexi-wings used by rivals.

Meanwhile, the company has also been deeply involved in the engine freeze saga. While Toyota has softened its approach, Honda has been the most vocal manufacturer in its opposition to FIA president Max Mosley's ideas. We spoke to Nick Fry about Hockenheim, the technical restructuring, and the seemingly endless political saga.

Q: Jenson was contesting third and finished fourth. Are you pleased to be up there after recent disappointments?

Jenson Button (Honda RA106) passes Giancarlo Fisichella (Renault R26) for third early in the 2006 German GP at Hockenheim © LAT

Nick Fry: "The important thing is that the Honda team are back racing - it's as simple as that. I think it's encouraging that Jenson managed to overtake a couple of Renaults and one McLaren during the course of the race. The fact that he was up there fighting with the top guys is important, and important for everyone's motivation. One swallow doesn't make a summer, but on the other hand, this is certainly a step in the right direction."

Q: You were quicker than Renault all day. Do you think they just got something wrong with their tyres?

Fry: "We were very dubious about the construction that Renault had chosen, we didn't think it was the right choice. We had the same compounds as Renault, but we had a different construction. We weren't convinced, and I think our engineers were proven right this time round. It's great to be ahead of the Renaults, and I look forward to my case of champagne from Jean Todt for pushing them down a few more points!"

Q: But was it disappointing to be passed by Kimi Raikkonen near the end?

Fry: "Jenson did pass Raikkonen early on, and Raikkonen got him back later on. It was down to the condition of the tyres at the time. We had a lot of graining, and there was no real chance of keeping Kimi behind. But fourth place is going in the right direction."

Q: The downside is that Rubens retired again...

Fry: "It looks like a fairly catastrophic failure of something in the engine. It just happened very suddenly, and he spun on his own oil. We have to look into what it is. In testing, this specification engine recently has been very reliable. We need to understand why it failed."

Q: Any thoughts on Hungary? There's no testing, and teams have very little chance to do anything to the cars...

Fry: "The cars go directly to Budapest from Germany, and so do most of the guys, so there's not much chance to improve things. Maybe we'll get a few tiny things on the car during the course of this week, so we'll work away at doing that. Obviously it's a different circuit, even less in the way of straights than Hockenheim, and a lot of heat.

"The heat suited us in Germany, and in fact the diminishing heat is what handicapped Jenson in his third stint, the fact that the sun went in and the track temperature wasn't quite as high probably was the thing that resulted in the tyre graining that we got and why we were slower in the third stint rather than the second."

Q: Have you analysed why you made a step forward - what was it about Germany that suited the package?

Fry: "It's what we've done to the car and what others haven't been able to do to theirs. Obviously your competitive position is a combination of the two. There is no one thing that we've done to the car, and in fact the things we have done to the car, individually, are relatively small. But it's a little bit of aerodynamics.

Geoff Willis © LAT

"The package we put on for Magny-Cours didn't work as well as we expected. So at Jerez we made some modifications to that. Some of the mechanical parts of the car have changed a little bit. Also the electronics have improved at least one step. They're all tiny, and most of them you would say are minute, but together they obviously have an effect."

Q: And things have settled down after the management changes?

Fry: "It's going very well indeed, in fact. Obviously we miss Geoff's F1 experience, but the team is really pulling together well. What I asked the chief engineers was to look at this as a big opportunity. Their boss isn't there for the moment, and they've got the opportunity to step up and do an even bigger job and make bigger decisions. I'm pleased to say they've all done that."

Q: There have been suggestions that Geoff was 'holding the team back,' in that he was being a little conservative with bringing on new stuff, and that Shuhei Nakamoto has changed that. Is that true?

Fry: "I think it's fair to say that the improvements that you see on the car today aren't things that we invented in the last two weeks. A lot of them are things that have been around even since just after the start of the season, and which hadn't been introduced on the car. And some of them are relatively small, things that Rubens wanted, like a slightly different brake balancing device, which we've talked about since the beginning of the year. It was on the car for this race. As I say, there's nothing magical at all, it's just been hard work, and a whole bunch of small things."

Q: But is it fair to see that there's a change of philosophy, and you are being more aggressive?

Fry: "I'm not sure it's more aggressive, but we are putting on the car a lot of small things which, when you look at it on paper, are very small and in some ways almost immeasurable. But bunging them together, they seem to be adding up. Nakamoto is a racing guy. He doesn't know as much about F1 as Geoff, but he's got the racing spirit."

Q: Is there a feeling now that with the end of the season coming, it's worth taking risks - whatever you come up with, try it and see if it works?

Fry: "The thing about F1 is that big risks don't usually pay off, and in fact they frequently push you backwards. I think our aero package for Magny-Cours might be an example of where we were a bit hasty, and in fact it moved us backwards, not forwards.

"You have to be very careful, because even from our Magny-Cours position it was still possible to go a lot further backwards than that! It's a matter of taking balanced risks. But you'd be right to say that we will continue to push like crazy, right through to the end of the year, and also that we will have an increasing number of changes to the car."

Q: Moving on to the politics... The Technical Working Group meeting in Germany was a formal opportunity for the teams to support bringing the engine freeze forward to 2007, but it didn't happen. It seems inevitable, so what's the next step?

Fry: "I believe we still need to work away on a compromise position. The June 2006 engine would be a disastrous situation that would be incredibly hard for us and for a number of other teams to accept. If that were to come about, I think we would be in a very serious situation as a team. I know, speaking to other team principals on the grid, that they feel the same.

Norbert Haug, Flavio Briatore, Dr. Mario Theissen, Otmar Szafnauer, Rob White © LAT

"We can't be put in a position where we would be uncompetitive for several years. Indeed, I don't really think that the FIA would want that anyway, because all of us have got to get together and improve the sport. It's still an open issue for me, and we've still got to find an honourable compromise. I hope that with Max Mosley's leadership he can help us do that, because I don't think anyone wants an F1 series for several years when we know who the winner is going to be. It would be a complete disaster."

Q: The TWG didn't specifically discuss 'trading' an October homologation date for a complete 2007 freeze, but is that the likely outcome?

Fry: "In my view it's a possible compromise. Whether it's October or whether it's Christmas or whether it's March of next year. I think the important thing is to end up with a fair and relatively level playing field for the next few years. I think that's in everyone's interest. Unenlightened self-interest doesn't really help anyone. It's a bit like one manufacturer consistently winning at Le Mans. It all gets a bit dull, and that will be the situation for F1."

Q: But in Max's response to the GPMA offer in Magny-Cours, and his letter to the teams in Hockenheim, he doesn't appear to have left any room for compromise...

Fry: "Success, in my book, is for someone to have the leadership skills to see the big picture. F1 is a pretty successful series, and the rules have been crafted to help that. People need to be big people as it were, as opposed to little people, and I believe that they will see the bigger picture and we will get a solution."