Willis slams Honda for ‘nightmare’ season

(GMM) A year after leaving the team, Honda's ousted technical director has described the Japanese outfit's 2007 campaign as a "nightmare" caused by bad management.

48-year-old Briton Geoff Willis, who walked out of the Brackley factory last July following a demotion, hit out at the tendency to manage "by committee" after the RA107 failed to race to a single point in the opening grands prix of 2007.

"Oh dear! What should have been a development of the competent 2006 car has turned into a nightmare," he wrote in the magazine F1 Racing.

"It looks as though most of the lessons of 2005-2006 have either been forgotten or ignored, and the development momentum of the last races of 2006 lost."

It is often suggested in the paddock that F1's two Japanese teams – including the Cologne based Toyota – are overly steered from a distance by Tokyo chiefs, with Willis also charging: "(Honda) must start to realize that F1 isn't a place for management by committee, however well intentioned."