20/08/2007
NEWS STORY
To some it would appear that the 'Brackley Thought Police' have been at it again.
Last week, writing on his personal website, Honda driver Rubens Barrichello expressed his confidence for the remainder of the season, predicting that his team would make a noticeable step forward within the next month.
The Brazilian also confirmed what many within the Paddock have been saying for some time - and something which saw Pitpass threatened with legal action, following comments by Helios - when the veteran of 243 Grands Prix revealed that the main reason for the uncompetitiveness of the RA107 can be traced to the team's new windtunnel.
Referring to a meeting with the team's most recent recruits (Loic Bigois who came from Williams and John Owen from BMW), Rubens wrote:
"We had a very long talk and they made a great impression. I heard from them exactly what I expected to. They believe that our wind tunnel's calibration is wrong and because of that everything that has been developed has not been effective.
"We will have to change many things even parts of the structure inside the wind tunnel and it will be about a month until we are able to see changes," he reveals. "The best thing is that for us to be sure that next year's car will be good we need to change this year's car to know if the changes are going in the right direction. I'm sure they are, they have to be!"
However, a revisit to his website now shows that all reference has been removed, as has the prediction that it will be a month before changes are seen.
Maybe it was the 'Brackley Thought Police', maybe the various F1 websites that ran the Brazilian's comments imagined it, or maybe some nasty person hacked into Rubens' website.
One cannot help but wonder if Rubens received the same sort of legal threat as Pitpass, after all, surely as an employee of the Honda F1 Racing Team the Brazilian, by making such comments on his website, has breached his team's confidentiality, whereas Pitpass has never have signed such an agreement, nor would any magazine, newspaper or website.
Either way, judging by the way Rubens' comments have been edited (cough) we can only assume that it wasn't the windtunnel, and that we shouldn't expect an improvement in the next month.
Then again, Pitpass' sources remain adamant that it will be several months before there is an improvement aero-wise, but by that time the season will be over.