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F1: Barrichello: Honda Car a “Parachute”
Written by: Kevin Krefting   
04/08/2007
Sepang, Malaysia
 


The RA107 is good on corners - it's straightline speed that's killing it, Barrichello believes. (LAT Photo) » More Photos

That the new Honda RA107 is a defective-at-birth car there's little doubt, but what exactly is making the millionaire Japanese team be outpaced even by its own satellite Super Aguri operation was made a little clearer by driver Rubens Barrichello as he voiced his frustrations during a lamentable Malaysian Grand Prix weekend.

According to the Brazilian, who was forced to start dead last in Sepang after switching to his T-car and back – with that T-car entirely out of setup with his regular racer, a team mistake dubbed by Rubens as "amateurish" – the RA107's key deficiency is in the downforce vs. drag quotient.

"It's not that our car is particularly unstable or anything like that," he told Brazil's Radio Bandeirantes. "It's got good downforce and sticks well in the corners.

"But it acts like a parachute
on the straights. Even with us trying to compensate for it, we were still giving up some three miles per hour to the Super Aguris, which have the exact same engine, on the main straight."



Catch up on the latest in Formula 1 each month in RACER. Scott Speed relates the story behind his turbulent off-season with the Toro Rosso team in our May issue, on sale now!


The situation got to a point that Barrichello was seen in an uncharacteristic outburst inside the Honda pits, when he found out the steering rack on his T-car had an entirely different calibration that the one he was previously using.

"Sometimes you just need to voice off some truths," he justified.