|
TEAM PRINCIPALS: Christian
HORNER (Red Bull), John HOWETT (Toyota), Adam PARR (Williams), Simon ROBERTS
(Force India).
Q: Question to all of you. We see vastly varying performances from your cars
from weekend to weekend. Or it seems that way. Are you happy with the
consistency of your car and, if not, what is the problem? Where is the
inconsistency? Adam, would you start? For example, your two cars were
virtually at the bottom of the time sheets today.
Adam PARR: Well, actually this year I think we have been very pleased with
our performances. It has been much more consistent than in previous years.
Today has been a bit of a set back and we obviously need to do some serious
work to put on a more competitive performance tomorrow afternoon. But so far
this season has been much more consistent.
Q: Is there any idea what was happening?
AP: Today? Well, I hope someone has got an idea. But we are in the debrief
right now, so hopefully we will know a lot more later on.
Q: Simon, what about you?
Simon ROBERTS: Well, I think that this year everything is a lot closer, so
as teams move from race to race we are finding it really difficult to guess
where we are going to be. That’s happened to us this afternoon. Like Adam we
are in the debrief now looking at the data. I think with the tyres we
thought that the softs would be the tyre to be on. We could get it to work
early on but later on in the session we were not so sure. I think it is good
in a way. Everyone changes a bit race to race and even small increments in
performance improvement can make quite a big difference and I think that is
all you are seeing really.
Q: John, Toyota seem to have been up and down a bit even in these last eight
days.
John HOWETT: I think all teams have been varying. I think our biggest
problem in the last two or three races appear to have been pretty strong
race pace if you look at fuel corrected pace but, actually, a problem with
one lap pace. We started very strongly. We seem, relatively, to have dropped
back but the biggest issue we feel in the last two or three races has been
the one lap pace.
Q: Christian, your consistency seems to be not bad.
CH: No, we have been reasonably consistent. Obviously, Valencia was a blip
but I think on a day like today we treat it very much like a test day. It is
impossible to predict what everyone else is doing with fuel loads, with
revs, with engines, with set up, so we work through our own programme and we
are reasonably happy with the day’s work we have done today.
Q: Adam, the form since Silverstone seems to have been really good. You seem
to have taken a step up. What is the plan for the future?
AP: I think what’s happened since Silverstone, well, probably since Monaco,
is actually we have been finishing the job. I think we have had a reasonably
competitive car all season up until today but it took us a few races to
really start bringing home the points. But I think it has been consistent
since then. We have had fourth and fifth position through pretty much every
race, so the main thing is just getting the job finished and we have been
doing that much better recently.
Q: Is that going to be enough to hold onto Nico Rosberg?
AP: That’s a very good question. I think you will probably have to ask him
whether we are doing a good enough job to hold onto him or not but we are
certainly doing the best we can in terms of giving him a good car, good
strategy and trying to finish it for him.
Q: What about Kazuki (Nakajima)? He seems to be having a lot of bad luck.
AP: Well, it is just absolutely awful to put a driver out there and then
have a reliability issue or a pit stop issue and I think we all feel that we
would like to see him doing the whole job himself and us doing our bit. It
is difficult to blame a driver when you are not doing the full job yourself,
so we need to look at our own performance particularly, for example, in
Valencia.
Q: What is the engine situation likely to be for next year?
AP: The engine situation is still a work in progress but I think we are
relatively clear on which direction we want to go in but obviously it is not
finalised yet.
Q: Simon, can you tell us what your function is at Force India.
SR: I joined the team as part of the collaboration and the contract between
Force India and McLaren Mercedes. It gave the team the opportunity to review
its management structure which was done before I got there. I am there to
run the team for Force India and that is what I do. Fundamentally because I
know how all three organisations work I am pretty well placed to do that.
That enabled us to take a very late decision and design and build a car
around a new engine and a new gearbox and get out to do at least a couple of
week’s winter testing which the team did a fantastic job doing. Really since
then my focus has just been more on the internal running of the team,
improving things every weekend, and helping the guys down the tunnel and the
design team to bring upgrades to the track just like any other team.
Q: And the performance curve seems to be improving all the time.
SR: Yes, we are quite pleased. We are a small team and we have to be careful
how we spend our money, so we had a strategy which we have been able to
deploy. We took up significant upgrades to Silverstone and Valencia. Both
those worked and we are still on the back of one of those here. We still
have some stuff to come for later on in the season. That’s how we are doing.
Q: Presumably the target is World Championship points?
SR: Yes, we talk about it between every event. What do we need to do. What
more can we do to make that a reality and all we can do is keep pushing,
keep trying to improve our performance, and try and make some luck. We have
been close a few times this year. We were close last year but you just have
to be there. We have got ourselves into what we think is a solid Q2 team now
and we think if we can run near the front of Q2, then we can score points
when the opportunity arises.
Q: John, there have been all sorts of stories about the future of the team.
Can you give us your point of view on that?
JH: I mean there is a lot of speculation about a lot of teams. I have no
reason at all to question that Toyota will be here for the next three years
and no information to the contrary. I think there was some story about
budget and fundamentally our budgets are always approved in November and I
genuinely was explaining that this year it was a bit more difficult to know
what is likely to be approved and we have to accept that there is a very
tough economy out there.
Q: How important is it for Toyota to supply another team?
JH: I think we did it really because we wanted to contribute to Formula One.
I think at that time Ferrari were supplying and nobody else did. I think we
are very willing and open to supply. We basically have an agreement with
Williams to supply in 2010 but I think Toyota generally is normally a
sensible company and if somebody does not wish to continue trading with you,
we will consider favourably that decision. But, as such, as I sit here we do
have a binding contract to supply Williams with engines in 2010. But we
don’t gain a huge amount of material information from it. We are not
developing a new engine. Therefore, I am not sure if we gain a material
amount from losing supply at this current time.
Q: Jarno Trulli has outqualified Timo Glock eight to three times but they
are level pegging in terms of race performances and results. What about Timo
as he always seems to improve more places than any other driver this season?
JH: His race performances are always enormously strong. It is really clear
that he seems to be happy. He had problems in Valencia where he was hit by
(Sébastien) Buemi but when we actually look at the first two or three laps
he did in the race, fuel corrected, he had an amazing pace and he continued
the stints very strongly. I think really we are working very hard with him
to try and improve the qualifying performance and I think if he can get
there he has a really strong performance capability.
Q: Is he lacking something in qualifying?
JH: I don’t know. Last week I think he was six-tenths up on his previous lap
time and would have been quicker than Jenson but had small problem in turn
13. We have got to understand whether it is the car too much on the edge or
driver or set up but I think really we believe he has got it and we are
working very hard to get him up the grid, so he has a good starting
position.
Q: Christian, some interesting challenges for you. First of all, could you
just explain to us what the situation is with Sebastian’s engines, what he’s
got left, what he hasn’t got?
CH: The situation on engines is quite clear. Each driver is allowed eight
race engines; four of those are consigned to shrapnel, unfortunately. But
he’s got two new race engines and two used engines available to him. We will
strategically use the two new engines, so we will be running one here, one
possibly in Monza and then with the used engines, we will spread those out
over the remaining Fridays. So if we’re frugal with the mileage on the
Friday and go for quality rather than quantity, then hopefully we can avoid
taking a penalty. But if we use any additional engines to those eight, then
we will incur a ten-place penalty.
Q: You would never run an engine over a specific mileage that Renault have
given you?
CH: Well, Renault obviously have a target mileage and as they gain
confidence in those engines perhaps going beyond that mileage then we might
extend but they’re working with us on that and obviously trying to support
us in the best way they can.
Q: In terms of Sebastian (Vettel) and Mark (Webber) and their championship
positions, how do you manage that – or do you not?
CH: Very simply; we support both drivers equally. We have brought the same
upgrades to the cars at every event this year and it’s really been down to
what they do on the circuit. It would be wrong from a team perspective to be
favouring at this point of the championship one driver over the other, so
we’ve treated both with an equal hand.
Q: We know Sebastian has got a contract until 2012, what’s the situation
with Mark?
CH: Mark – we were delighted to secure his services for a further year,
which we announced in Germany, the weekend that he won his first Grand Prix.
So we’re really happy with the driver line-up we’ve got for 2010. I think
it’s one of the stronger pairings in the field, it’s a great blend of youth
and experience and there’s a very strong working spirit between the drivers,
that’s professional and very collaborative, so from a team point of view,
we’re extremely happy with the pairing that we have.
Q: And probably happy to have that issue settled unlike quite a few others.
CH: Yes, absolutely. Obviously we’re into the driver merry-go-round at the
moment and the fact that we’re not part of that is very settling from a team
point of view. They know exactly who we’re working with for next year.
QUESTIONS FROM THE FLOOR
Q: (Mike Doodson) My question is about aerodynamics because last year you
guys sent your engineering wizards to lots of long meetings to resolve the
problem of overtaking. I think the FIA had some input into that. The result,
though, has been that these cars look as though they’ve been made out of
Lego and there has been absolutely no improvement at all in the overtaking.
I’m interested in knowing just how important overtaking is to the show as
far as you’re concerned, and what is the next step?
CH: I’m not an aerodynamicist, so my answer won’t be particularly qualified
but I will give you my observation. Obviously a lot of work was done through
the Overtaking Working Group. It’s not rocket science to see that the lap
times at several circuits this year are quicker than last year.
Unfortunately, the double diffuser has played a part in that, I think, with
the wake that the cars are now developing and the drivers do find it very
difficult to follow each other closely. But I think the amount of
development that has gone into these cars with the aero package that is
there is just as critical as it has been in previous years. I think you also
have to look at some of the circuit layouts. There are some circuits where
you see more overtaking than others. I think you will see more this weekend
at a circuit like this than you will at Singapore, for example. Unless you
go back to really taking pretty much all the downforce off the car and going
back to 600hp almost Formula Fords you’re not going to see a big difference
in the overtaking at the current circuits that we race at. Is it important
for Formula One? Well, I’ve been watching Formula One since the 1980s and I
don’t think there’s ever been a huge amount of overtaking. Obviously the
show is important, it’s important that drivers are able to race closely with
each other and I think we actually have had some very exciting racing this
year but it’s obviously something that can be worked on in the future and
hopefully improved.
JH: I honestly don’t think I’ve got much to add to Christian’s point. I’ve
been watching Formula One for a long time and there are those great
overtaking moves but I’m not sure that in the last twenty years at least
that there has been a huge amount. I think certainly FOTA now wants to look
at how it can contribute generally to improving Formula One value to all the
stakeholders and clearly overtaking is an issue that will need to be
discussed and raised, but immediately, now, we have a formula that we’ve
moved to, it hasn’t really achieved the objectives but we have had some
fairly good races, the performance between the cars looks very, very close.
If you look in qualifying this year there have been some circuits where it’s
enormously close: nine cars in less than one second or more, so it’s
something to be studied for the future but no need for panic.
SR: Yeah, I think I support everything the guys have just said. There is
overtaking, certainly for our drivers in the early laps of some of the
races, sometimes a little bit too exciting for us watching on the pit wall
but I think it’s circuit dependent as well. As Christian said, I think here
we’re expecting overtaking, I think probably the same at Monza but on the
street circuits it’s very, very difficult.
AP: I think hopefully next year with the lack of refuelling and perhaps the
impact that has on the tyres etc. there could be a bit more fun, but I think
fundamentally, if you have ten or twelve very competent teams and double
that number of very competent drivers and you line them up in order of speed
it’s improbable they are going to overtake. And of course the closer they
are in performance to each other, the less likely anyone is to pass anyone
else. I was slightly surprised when Frank (Williams) said on Monday this
week ‘we’ve got to do something about this’ and he said ‘let’s just split
the race into two – have a morning race and an afternoon one on a Sunday and
if that doesn’t work, let’s have a reverse grid in the second one.’ I think,
personally, Valencia was quite exciting if you were in a team in the garage
but quite frankly, if we carry on putting on races like that I think we will
only have ourselves to blame if nobody carries on watching.
Q: (Ian Parkes – The Press Association) Christian, the Brawns are down in
17th and 18th today; does that give you cause for optimism or is there a
little bit sandbagging going on from them? Is there more to come, do you
think?
CH: It’s a lot of sandbagging if they are sandbagging. As I said earlier, I
think that everybody goes about their own business on a Friday. They’ve
obviously been looking at different wing sweeps and so on as I think all
teams have been up and down the pit lane. You can’t read too much into
today, they tend to obviously run quite a bit of fuel and so it will be
interesting to see where the performance is tomorrow and on Sunday. We’re
quite happy with the preparation that we’ve had today and there are a few
other cars in the mix as well this weekend. Lewis (Hamilton), if you look
through the session, looks quick again, Heikki (Kovalainen) looks quick,
Kimi (Räikkönen) looks quick, so it’s going to be an interesting weekend.
Q: (Alan Baldwin – Reuters) If I could ask Christian about his team’s engine
supply and how soon you’re going to make your mind up and where you’re
tending towards?
CH: Well, it will definitely be a V8! We’re obviously in a position where,
as an independent team, we have a choice of engine. We’ve been very, very
happy with the supply that we’ve had from Renault for the last three years.
Any decision that will be made, will be made not on the outcome of a single
weekend but based on what we believe offers us the best opportunity of
performance and relationship for the future. We haven’t made any firm
decisions yet but we’re obviously nearing a time when we need to make a
commitment for next year.
Q: (MC) Is there a deadline?
CH: Well, Ross (Brawn) only chose his engine in January, so it shows it can
be done pretty late. We obviously don’t want to wait that long but I would
think that within the next couple of weeks we’ll hone in on a decision. |
