2007 was the year that... «Life to the Limit: My Autobiography»

2007 was the year that Honda decided to adopt a new ‘green’ way of working called Earth Dreams, which was done with the best of intentions but was fatally misguided. Firstly, they changed the livery of the car. They painted it as the planet Earth, to symbolise the fact that we were saving the planet. They didn’t have sponsors stickered on the car – the first time such a thing had happened since 1968 – but instead sponsors could ‘buy’ the car and use it as part of their marketing strategy: ‘the car is the star’ was the buzz-phrase at the time.
Added to that they changed all the monitors to make them low-emission; we had to make a big show of changing light bulbs wherever we went; we had to plant a tree for every lap we did, which meant that we spent the whole season being photographed planting trees.
All good in principle – don’t get me wrong. Just a bit of a ball-ache in practice, and maybe just a bit, dare I say, pointless. When you consider the carbon footprint of Honda, F1, and motor racing as a whole, it was like Bernard Matthews campaigning on behalf of vegetarianism.