Christian Klien is backing Honda to solve its current car problems and become a contender for the Formula One World Championship title.

The 24-year-old visited the team's headquarters in Brackley last week for two days and is full of praise for the way the team personnel are tackling the performance issues affecting the Honda RA107 car.

"In many ways the current problems affecting the car have shown me just how strong Honda is. The entire team is working so hard and really doing a fantastic job to solve these problems and ensure that we will be a contender in the future," said Christian after his visit. "There has been a lot of negative talk about the car and team in the media, but everyone seems to forget that this team won a race last season and as recently as 2004 finished 2nd in the World Championship. People make a team, and I can see that the people in our team are very talented, determined and working flat out to make us competitive again. Honda is not going to remain in this situation for very long."

"The team is focussing on finding all the problems with the car, and everyone is pulling together very well. Of course it has been a difficult start to the season but it is at these times that we have to support everyone in the team, whether at the factory or in the race or test team or at Tochigi in Japan. And of course the race drivers. Jenson and Rubens have a tough job to do at the moment, and they need support too."

Christian is looking forward to testing the RA107 again in Paul Ricard the week after the Spanish Grand Prix in Barcelona, and meanwhile is continuing with the extensive training programme which is particularly important due to the testing regulations which severely limit his time in the car.

"We have some updates for the car coming in Barcelona for the test and when we go to Paul Ricard after the race in Spain I will have two days in the car during which I hope we can make further progress. Even though the new regulations mean that I have been very limited in terms of testing this season, doing only 1000kms in the new car, I am doing everything I can to help the team and contribute in every way possible. In previous years test drivers would do perhaps 10,000 or 15,000kms of testing, but that's no longer possible. It is frustrating, but my job is to support Honda whenever required and work towards my personal objective of racing and winning for the team in the future. In the meantime I have been using the great weather we have been enjoying in Austria to do a lot of cycling in the mountains so that I am as fit as possible."