88 F1 RACING DECEMBER 2019
Really we were nowhereclose t o resolving the
issue of thefuture of theteam until well into
2009, when we were starting todo we ll.
“We got Kroll, the detective agency, to l ook
at someof the prospectivepurchasers. The guy
[Kallakis] – it took a lot ofuncovering but we
found he’d been selling false Britishhere ditar y
titles to Americanswho didn’t know better.
“We had incredible ups anddowns almost on
a daily basis. We had days when we thought we’d
crackedit and other days where wethoughtthat
was it. We just hadto p lough on.”Legendhasitthattheteam knew it hada great
car ready to run. Thetruth is somewhatdifferent.
AlthoughHonda had pouredunprecedented
resources into developing the 2009car, it also
had formin producing stinkers.
NickFry:“We’d jacked in the 2008 season when it
was clea r the car wasn’t good enough.Once we’d
got Ross on boardthe focus wason the regulation
changes for2009– we knew if we startedon
that earlier than others it might give us abit of
an advantage. Internally the objective wasto be
in the topthree. When Honda pulledout and
decided it didn’twant to sell usthe en gine we
definitelyreducedthat target – we thoughtthat
even if we could get into thetop halfwe’d
be doingwell. We genuinely didn’t know how
quick the car was.
“The computer simulations, frankly, we
didn’t believe.There wassome workdone that
indicated we’d be a second anda half quicker
than the othersatthe startoftesting, but we
didn’t participate inthestart of testing.We
could only look atour aero numbers and makea
guesstimate.And thenumberswere disregarded
as ridiculous becausethey were so good.Then,
when wegot to Barcelona, we were evenbet ter
than the numbers showed.”THEY WEREN’T
THAT CONFIDENT
ABOUT THE CAR
88 F1 RACING DECEMBER 2019
Really we were nowhereclose t o resolving the
issue of thefuture of theteam until well into
2009, when we were starting todo we ll.
“We got Kroll, the detective agency, to l ook
at someof the prospectivepurchasers. The guy
[Kallakis] – it took a lot ofuncovering but we
found he’d been selling false Britishhere ditar y
titles to Americanswho didn’t know better.
“We had incredible ups anddowns almost on
a daily basis. We had days when we thought we’d
crackedit and other days where wethoughtthat
was it. We just hadto p lough on.”
Legendhasitthattheteam knew it hada great
car ready to run. Thetruth is somewhatdifferent.
AlthoughHonda had pouredunprecedented
resources into developing the 2009car, it also
had formin producing stinkers.
NickFry:“We’d jacked in the 2008 season when it
was clea r the car wasn’t good enough.Once we’d
got Ross on boardthe focus wason the regulation
changes for2009– we knew if we startedon
that earlier than others it might give us abit of
an advantage. Internally the objective wasto be
in the topthree. When Honda pulledout and
decided it didn’twant to sell usthe en gine we
definitelyreducedthat target – we thoughtthat
even if we could get into thetop halfwe’d
be doingwell. We genuinely didn’t know how
quick the car was.
“The computer simulations, frankly, we
didn’t believe.There wassome workdone that
indicated we’d be a second anda half quicker
than the othersatthe startoftesting, but we
didn’t participate inthestart of testing.We
could only look atour aero numbers and makea
guesstimate.And thenumberswere disregarded
as ridiculous becausethey were so good.Then,
when wegot to Barcelona, we were evenbet ter
than the numbers showed.”
THEY WEREN’T
THAT CONFIDENT
ABOUT THE CAR