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Written by Info from the inside.
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Tuesday, 06 May 2008 |
Was the fall of Aguri all down to finance or was it just a case of sour grapes?
In the current climate it's easy to understand the financial landscape has difficulty in supporting F1 as a sport. Certainly, the move to have all teams as 'constructors' from 2010 is a message to the racing world that only large corporations should entertain joining the circus. It's likely Midland-Spyker-Force India will be the next casualty as the money-men decide it's better to put their pennies into vague enviro-technologies that cost a fortune and don't work, but no-one will say so. But enough of that...
Honda quite rightly do not want to finance two teams, but the move to block the acquisition of SAF1 after a very good offer is bewildering. I am sure the Honda executives thought long and hard about the issue; 'Are we loyal to Aguri or are we businessmen.'
Just eight years ago the answer would have been 'We are racers!' but sadly no longer. As far as Honda and F1 is concerned Honda Racing is in the grip of 'Nasty-Nick'.
Nick Fry's anamosity to Super Aguri comes from a few clear issues.
1. Fry's leadership could not produce a good F1 car. In-fact, almost the entire SAF1 technical team was seconded to Brackley to fix the problems with the 2007 Honda. Do remember that SAF1 did consistently better than Honda Racing in 2007 until SA came to the rescue mid-season.
2. Fry has not got the right drivers. Button and Barichello would be a formidable combination in a good car, but neither of these drivers is able to handle a badly performing car. That's the difference between the Sato/Davidson combination and the Button/Barrichello combination. Takuma and Anthony can compensate for a problematic chassis, B&B cannot.
3. Fry's leadership has killed moral at Brackley. I have had quite close contact with a number of people at Honda Racing over the past 18 months - their admiration for SAF1 and distain for Nick is amazingly clear.
4. Management of Honda Racing is in a shambles right now. People are not 'talking' to each other. Whilst SA just gets on with the job. Fry is no David Richards.
5. Fry was effectively sidelined by Honda even before Braun arrived. With the arrival of Ross Braun, Nick is busy with things that just don't matter to a works team. Aguri san on the other hand has been helped and pushed forward in a way Fry has never experienced - and likely never will.
With Honda trying to decide between loyalty and business pragmatisim a few poisoned words from the desk of Nick Fry are likely all that was needed to tip the balance.
Whilst I believe that based on 2007 performance the better choice for Honda would have been to sell Honda Racing and take up SA as the works team, that chance has now past.
Hopefully, as Honda start their belated spring cleaning they will look closely at their management, engineering, and driver combination. A lot of talent has been freed up from SAF1, picking up the obviously overall better engineers from SA should be a no-brainer for Honda. A great many very professional people from other departments should also be scooped up before other teams get them.
If there is any justice in F1 then before long we should see only one real casualty of the shutting down of Super Aguri F1 team - Nick Fry.
But then again, maybe that was Honda's idea all along. |
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Last Updated ( Wednesday, 07 May 2008 )
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