Mark Hughes: F1's Inside Line

At its most basic level, aerodynamic competence. The mechanical aspects of the last few Hondas have been state of the art. All the anecdotal evidence suggests that they have been the lightest, the stiffest and with the lowest centre of gravity. Slow-corner speeds tend to back this up. Mid-corner apex speeds in slow corners last year showed the Honda and the Super Aguri (last year's Honda) to be consistently the fastest of all. It was at all the other bits of the circuit that the Honda went disastrously wrong - the bits where the speeds are dominated by aerodynamics.

Why was it so lacking in aero? For many reasons, but chief among them was bad practice. The car was configured in a new tunnel that had not been properly verified and calibrated. There were extenuating circumstances why - the old tunnel was being heavily used in major upgrades to the 2006 car at the time the '07 car was being configured - but it was still bad practice. Stronger technical leadership would not have allowed it.