Honda RA107

[zac510]

http://motoring.aol.co.uk/drink-problem ... 1909990009 I've already mentioned how I loath this guy with a passion and it seemed appropritate that he responded with an article about F1. How much do you think he really knows about it?

Not much. He seems to have missed Honda's official line on the livery, that it is 'bringing awareness to global warming issues' and jumped on the whole hypocrit/oxymoron bandwagon. He also assumes that that think we should be impressed. I don't think that they think we should be impressed, but that we will place global warming into our subconscious.
Not that we should kid ourselves anyway, Honda's primary purpose in F1 is to market their brand. It's a major step that a team should give up their income and livery entirely for this.

[Tom]

This is my favorite bit...

I also wonder whether the names of wealthy, eco-unfriendly corporate sponsors are absent from the paint job because they are not deemed to be green enough or theyre refusing to stump up tens of millions of sponsorship dosh to be associated with Jenson Button, the Honda driver who has lost more than 99 per cent of the F1 races he has competed in?

Last I checked to lose a race you must come last, a position Jenson has not seen for many years. By that logic only Boullion of the 20s could be described as a sucessful GP driver, having won the majority of races he entered.

Another interesting point...

Ferrari is the final member of the current F1 club and it can't build any road car that does more than 15.4 mpg.

What Ferrari engineers can't do is not worth documenting, they could, if they so desired, easily beat 50mpg in a car, Citroen could, and the last time they had a technological breakthrough was over a decade ago!

[checkered]

Well, Tom

I gave it a read. It just seems like one more "I had to find an angle to write about this because my contract demands a certain amount of material per week and after allocating minutes of my precious time doing research, this is what I came up with" kinda deals. Any itinerant msgboard commentator wannabe could've punched that out in his spare time. I won't comment the writer's efforts more widely since I haven't familiarized myself with those.

About the issue of Honda's novel approach to livery, personally, I'm divided. In simple marketing terms it might not be a bad idea to copy the "million dollar homepage" in F1 form (do you know about that idea?). Clearly it's not meant to be a perfectly tenable approach in the sense that I suspect the marketing folks (19 entertainment) must've known that a bit of debate makes for an enormous amount of otherwise precious publicity absolutely free. Organisations like "Friends of the Earth" are just as knowledgeable about generating sound bytes that major news organisations are more than happy to parrot, so there's been an unhelpful synergy there.

And by "unhelpful synergy" I mean that as a controversial person (in this case as a tree hugging F1 afecionado ) to me, all said and done has been very depressingly predictable - as the referenced article shows. What I would have liked to see is that people could've looked past the imperfections and not just jump to conclusions about what companies like Honda, when prompted, are really, truly capable of doing. Or how environmentalist organizations could co-operate with businesses without sacrificing independence and integrity. Perhaps the amount of excess CO2 and methane in our athmosphere is inversely proportional to our capability of working together and using our imagination. And I'm trying hard not to sound too altruistic here.

Just shrugging off issues and masking one's unwillingness for thought or action by stating the obvious, like in the article in question, gets us nowhere. For the time being I'm ready to dismiss such efforts as the inevitable waste percentage in striving for a better overall efficiency of thought for a sustainable future (servers and internet switchboards do consume electricity, too, and require maintenance). Just as I'm sure the efficiency of an F1 engine can be improved, hopefully (promptly) achieving a zero carbon emission energy cycle and yielding that technology for everyday use.

Perhaps it could be taken at face value that Honda, in their part, have at least slightly advanced that quest by their latest action.

[captainmorgan]

for many sportsbooks, and even for many racing drivers, losing means anything but first.

also, i was of the position that honda risked hypocrisy with a treehugger livery. But i had forgotten that all of F1 is carbon neutral after purchased credits. So its not like the team is putting on a total joke.

I'm curious though. The colors on the car seem almost faded... Does anyone else see this? If so, is it possible Honda skipped some of the normal paint layers and wax to save weight for a better cg/polar moment?

[benjabulle]

I added photos of the V8 RA807E which can be seen at Geneva motor show, also the Toyota TF106 and Ferrari 248, enjoy

http://www.gurneyflap.com/Resources/DSC_7410.jpg

http://www.gurneyflap.com/Resources/DSC_7411.jpg

http://www.gurneyflap.com/Resources/DSC_7418.jpg

http://www.gurneyflap.com/Resources/DSC_7415.jpg

[waynes]

excellent pictures, thank you

[ss_collins]

benja - can you email me at sam_collins@ipcmedia.com

[mx_tifoso]

question;

is honda going to race with the google earth livery ? without sponsor decals? or are they going to be included by friday?

[manchild]

question;

is honda going to race with the google earth livery ? without sponsor decals? or are they going to be included by friday?

As seen on launch. Google earth, no sponsors.

[ss_collins]

seems like the car is a complete dog, slower than the RA106!!

[ginsu]

i agree, but this is not the honda I know. something is deeply wrong with the structure there at honda, and I'm going to have to say it's not suprising, they have lost so much momentum, i really think firing david richards destroyed that team....they are off the map these days...it's a shame, i love their road cars!