By Phil Huff
April 21 2006

Otmar Szafnauer sat in on the Friday Five at San Marino today, putting a new twist on Jenson Button's last second retirement in Australia, and discussing some changes for 2008. A quiet session, Otmar didn't have a great deal to contribute, but here's everything he said... Otmar, Jenson's retirement from Melbourne. How did that come about, especially pulling off before the chequered flag?

Well, as you saw, it was a spectacular retirement on the last lap of Melbourne. We had no inkling of the fact that the engine was going to let go until about halfway through the last lap and then noticed some idiosyncrasies on the telemetry. We didn't know whether Jenson was going to make it or not. However, we had a feeling that something was happening. And then on the straight, when the engineers saw what happened, we just considered Jenson's safety and the safety of everyone else - I think we were half a kilometre away from the finish line when that happened - and we just told him the best thing to do was to pull over as quickly as he could and that's what he did.

Which would Honda have preferred?

Well, that's hypothetical. You always prefer points because that's what we're here to do. However, you can't say that points is what you want to do over somebody's safety so the right thing to do and the thing we prefer is to have a safe conclusion to something like that.

This year, Honda has said they would support the Super Aguri team who have had phenomenal reliability, but how much is 100% support, which it was quoted as being.

Well, it is 100% support from an engine perspective, so Super Aguri receive the same engines as Honda Racing F1 from Japan. We're also supporting them with some gearbox technology and we have some people from our R&D in Japan supporting them with general racing technologies and the know-how that we have. But they are definitely separate and split from Honda Racing F1 as they have different objectives and our predominant support is in engines and partly gearboxes.

You were at the Maranello meeting that was held where the 2008 regulations were discussed. Can we have your reactions and thoughts on those regulations working up to the homologation?

The process is a bit unclear. As I understand it, we could do it through the technical working group until June 30, which is when the 2008 regulations will be published. When the TWG meeting is called, I think the engine manufacturers should be prepared with some alternative engine solutions to suggest, because we differentiate from each other through engine technology. That would be our preferred method.