Autosport Plus

MPH: Mark Hughes also on...

...How Button would fare with Alonso as his teammate at Honda next year

Our leading news story last week was that Honda is the team leading the chase for the services of Fernando Alonso into next year. "Well, why wouldn't we be after him?" said a senior member of the team in Canada. "We're aspiring to be the best, we're confident we're going to make a big step forwards next year, we have better foundations in place than ever before. So we think we're finally going to be in a position to be able to justify hiring a double world champion.

"In the past we've had elements of the package that were right, and when things aligned well they enabled us to show strongly from time to time - such as in 2004 - but without all the pieces being in place you're never going to get that momentum; you're always going to be relying on things outside your control aligning in a way that happens to work in your favour.