Second Honda Team to Run Current BAR Chassis?
The second Honda-powered Formula 1 team being formed around Takuma Sato could be a duplicate of the works BAR squad, according to Autosport-Atlas.com.
If it does finalize its deal to race in 2006, the new team is now thought likely to run BAR’s 2006-spec chassis rather than this year’s model, as previously anticipated. The reason, it seems, is that the new Honda V8 engine will not properly fit in the current car.
The speculation is that Honda, which now owns the entire BAR team, plans to sell the design for next year’s BAR 008 to the new, still unnamed, team so that it begin preparations to compete. If the team is unable to get its affairs in order in time, then the car would be used as a basis for its 2007 chassis. In this way, the new team would get around F1’s governing Concorde Agreement requirement that teams must design and build their own car, since it would “own” the design when it officially commits to an F1 entry.
The ownership group behind the new team remains unknown, IRL IndyCar co-owner Aguri Suzuki having denied rumors at the Japanese Grand Prix last weekend that he was involved. Since then, speculation has centered on investors from Dubai being the source of funding for the project, having been rebuffed earlier this year in efforts to buy shares in BAR itself.
In addition to Sato, who is losing his seat on the BAR team to Rubens Barrichello next season, BAR test driver Anthony Davidson has also been linked to a possible race seat with the new team.
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