Barrichello cautious about new Honda
By Michele Lostia and Pablo Elizalde Thursday, January 24th 2008, 13:40 GMT
Rubens Barrichello at ValenciaRubens Barrichello remained cautious about the performance of the new Honda RA108 after testing the car for the first time on Wednesday at Valencia.
The Japanese squad are aiming to bounce back following a dismal 2007 season, and they are pinning their hopes on the new car which made its track debut yesterday.
Barrichello said the car was better than last year's, but he admitted that was not saying much.
"There is not much to say," Barrichello told autosport.com during testing at Valencia. "You could quite easily say it is better than the other one. That is not so difficult as the other one was tremendously bad.
"There are small issues like temperature here and there, the small bits we deal with in shaking down a new car. The initial feeling is okay, not bad. We will see what happens."
Barrichello finished down in 16th place in yesterday's test, over 3.5 seconds off the pace, but the Brazilian played down the significance of his time.
"I'm certain that this car is better than the 2007 one also because it's difficult to do worse," he told Gazzetta dello Sport.
"We did expect some gremlins, and in any case the 2007 car suffered of a massive weight shift under braking that this car shows to have solved.
"Laptimes were slow but also because on the first day it made no sense to push too hard. In any case we are awaiting the new aerodynamics."
