Honda RA107 - 2007 Season

2007 Season

The team's form in pre-season testing was patchy, and Jenson Button urged the squad to improve. It seemed the car was unable to produce the sort of results the car's predecessor had done but nobody on the outside could have ever known how awful the situation actually was.

The RA107's sheer lack of pace was evident at the season-opening Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne on March 18, with Button and Barrichello qualifying 14th and 17th respectively (well behind the 'customer' Super Aguri team, whose car, the Super Aguri SA07, is effectively an update of last year's Honda, the RA106). Barrichello finished the race in 11th place, with Button in 15th after receiving a drive-through penalty for speeding in the pit lane while also enduring considerable handling problems and understeer throughout the race.

Things did not get better for either driver as the team did not score any points in Malaysia, Bahrain, Spain, Monaco, Canada or the United States either. The car's reliability was proving to be good but this only further exposed the lack of pace it had. Honda did have their chances to gain points, however, at Monaco, Canada and Europe. The former of those races was where Honda had their most competitive race up to that point but they were on the wrong strategy and required to pit an extra time, dooming them to another pointless race. The other two races, however, were ones of chaos and at Canada, Barrichello could have finished as high as third but was again on the wrong strategy which required him to pit an extra time dropping him to 12th. In Europe, Jenson Button had had a strong first lap before the rain arrived and was up to 4th place before he aquaplaned off the circuit at the end of the pit straight, as did five other drivers.

At the French Grand Prix Button finished 8th, finally earning his and his team's first point of the season. This was a rare highlight as the car proved to be slow in subsequent races. The car put on its worst performance yet in Hungary where the RA107 proved to be the slowest car on the grid and Barrichello finished 18th and last. Honda debuted a front wing which looked very similar to the Spyker's wing. Button ran ahead of Adrian Sutil in his Spyker, but the RA107's throttle mechanism failed before the Spyker could overtake during pitstops.

For Monza, Honda reverted to using the old front wing and it seemed to pay off. Button scored his and Honda's second point of the season. At this point, they were still embarrassingly behind Super Aguri in the points table. At the Belgian Grand Prix both drivers were running well out of the points before Button eventually retired with hydraulic issues. This was not before the Super Aguri of Takuma Sato managed to pass Button around the outside going into Les Combes as had happened before at the USGP where Davidson in the sister Super Aguri overtook Button's Honda.

In Fuji, both cars were not ideally suited to the wet conditions and they finished outside the points again. But in Shanghai, Button again put on a remarkable display of driving in wet conditions and scored what was to be the RA107's best finish of the season with a fifth place, despite struggling for grip in the early stages. However in Brazil, both cars retired with overheating engines due to the very hot weather in the race. This meant that for the first time in his career, Barrichello failed to score points during the season, while Button finished 15th overall with six points.