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TECHNICAL DIRECTORS - Aldo
COSTA (Ferrari), James KEY (Sauber), Paddy LOWE (McLaren), Naoki TAKUNAGA
(Renault), Geoff WILLIS (HRT)
Q: A question to you all. Can you give us some idea as to how things went
today for you. James, could you start?
James KEY: It was okay today. For us it was a normal programme of running
tyres, set-up work and so on. We had some test items in the morning. FP1 was
a bit slippy to be honest, so there is not too much you can read into the
first session, but we got some useful data. It was a normal programme and it
seems to be alright. It was a bit like Malaysia for us, as we have got a bit
of work to do overnight with the balance of the car, in sector one
particularly, but otherwise it all went okay..
Q: Geoff, a bit of drama at the end there.
Geoff WILLIS: Yes, little bit of a mixed day. The morning was pretty good.
Again, with poor track conditions and the amount the track improved, we were
concentrating more on car aero work. We had some aero test pieces and just
understanding the car as we play catch-up, not having done any pre-season
testing. The morning went well. In the afternoon it went well with Narain's
(Karthikeyan) car but we had some problems,which lost us most of the session
with Tonio (Liuzzi), so not so successful. Having said that, I think we are
a lot happier with the car today and we still have got some more work to do
tomorrow.
Q: Tonio mentioned it was perhaps an hydraulics problem at the end of the
morning that stopped him. Was that what kept him out of the session in the
afternoon?
GW: Yes and no. It was a hydraulics installation problem. We damaged a
high-pressure supply. In the afternoon it was a little difficult to get to
the bottom of the problem. We had what we think is a software controls
problem, corrupted files into the car, but eventually got it sorted and got
it out so no more mechanical problems this afternoon.
Q: Naoki, poor old Nick Heidfeld. He seemed to have a bit of a dramatic day?
Naoki TAKUNAGA: Yeah, but overall I have to say it is a productive day. It
is quite unfortunate Heidfeld having to go off twice, one in each of the
sessions, but the damage is limited. We lost the two noses which is quite
unfortunate but overall it is a productive day. The balance is different in
the morning and the afternoon, so it is a mixture of everything but I think
we have got good data.
Q: It was mentioned you had quite a lot of understeer in this morning’s
session. Did that continue in the afternoon or did you manage to iron that
out?
NT: No, the balance is quite different in the afternoon from the morning. We
suffered a lack of grip, basically, all day, and at the end of P2 the
biggest problem was lack of traction so it is a bit of a mixture really.
Q: Aldo, maybe you weren’t here all day, I don’t know?
Aldo COSTA: It was not a very clean practice session both this morning and
this afternoon, mainly with Fernando (Alonso). Felipe (Massa) did his
programme with no big issues. With Fernando, we experienced two hydraulic
leakages on the same detail, zero kilometre, component, so there must be
some, let’s say, quality or finger problem, so we have to see and solve for
tomorrow. About the performance, we did with Fernando quite a lot of test
this morning in terms of aero tests I mean. Quite a lot of constant speed,
so not a lot of real running to test new pieces and test different
configurations so quite interesting to us. We concentrated with Felipe on
tyres, to try to understand better the tyres in this not very hot
environment.
Q: Paddy?
Paddy LOWE: We had a busy day, trying to do more things than there is time
to do. A mixture of testing new items on the car, mainly in P1, and doing
all the homework with different fuel levels, different tyres, generally to
our normal programme for that. I think generally happy. A few issues to iron
out. A lot of decisions to take, a lot of data to analyse overnight and and
then we will decide what we do tomorrow.
Q: Again a question to you all. You have now run the tyres in hot and cool
conditions. Cool in Melbourne, hot in Malaysia. What have you learnt and
what are your conclusions. James would you start.
JK: To be honest it has been a learning process and I still think it is to a
certain extent because in winter testing we had pretty cool conditions on
relatively green tracks, to begin with at lest. We were finding a certain
level of degradation and a certain characteristic of the tyre and so on.
Going to Melbourne was a complete surprise for everyone, I think, as the
track temperature was a little bit higher and the surface was certainly a
bit kinder to the tyres. Pirelli had always informed us that they felt the
tyres would be better as a race tyre in warmer conditions and that is
exactly what we found and I am sure it is the same for some others. In
Melbourne, it was certainly different and bit of a pleasant surprise for us
in the race with Sergio (Perez) particularly. With the hotter conditions in
Kuala Lumpur we expected to have a more oversteering car and more rear
limited car which proved to be the case but more than we expected by the
time we got there and got running so the balance shift for us was quite big
between Melbourne and Kuala Lumpur. Now, coming here, it is somewhere in the
middle, so if you take Melbourne and Kuala Lumpur as the extremes, then you
have got some sort of range with which to work with, but it is a bit too
early to say so. I think we are still learning. Predictions are kind of in
the right direction but the extremes of those predictions on what is going
to happen to the balance of the car is still quite tricky to predict at the
moment.
Q: Geoff?
GW: Certainly we are learning a lot and our experiments are somewhat
complicated by the fact that we are changing the car hugely from session to
session as we explore the operating envelope of the car and understand the
car better so some of the car balance changes that we see since Melbourne
practice to here are somewhat compensated by what we have been doing with
the car. Certainly we are aware that we have to start from zero again with
our understanding of what the tyres are going to do and particularly how
they evolve during the weekend. It is interesting to see what strategies end
up on the race day given what we think we know about them on Friday and
Saturday. We are learning a lot and we all as a business will get to
understand them more consistently in another two or three races.
Q: Naoki?
NT: I certainly agree with James and Geoff. We are in a very, very steep
learning curve at the moment and we found different surprises in different
circuits and in different conditions. It is quite difficult to predict
precisely how the tyre will behave at this circuit, which is again different
to any other previous races or tests, so we have to see. It is quite
difficult to predict.
Q: Is it the difference in the tarmac itself and the aggressiveness of the
tarmac or is it not the temperature?
NT: Yeah, if someone knows the precise answer, I would like to hear that. As
I said we are still, together with Pirelli in a learning curve.
AC: There are several parameters more than that. Track asphalt condition as
you said, asphalt type but also track temperature, also car set-up, and
driving style, so there are a lot of parameters to play with and quite a lot
to learn. You see that in the first two races, even in the same team, there
was quite a lot of difference between driver to driver so quite a lot to
learn overall.
Q: Paddy?
PL: Well I think it is really exciting as we have got a formula now where it
seems to be panning out that the tyre wear is very, very critical. I think
what is particularly interesting, great, really, a big challenge for us on
the pit-wall side, is you have got to manage the tyres across qualifying and
the race. If you were doing four stops you have used five out of six tyres,
completely consumed in the race, and how you use those tyres in qualifying
has a big consequence on your race result, which we saw to Lewis
(Hamilton’s) cost in Malaysia. Crucial phases of the race where he lost out
were a consequence of tyre consumption that he had done in qualifying so
great spectacle I think and a job for us to manage it well.
Q: It was interesting that your two drivers were faster than Sebastian
Vettel at different times. Is that the consequence of that or was it
Sebastian being slightly slower?
PL: I think most of the pace differences you see through the race are as a
result of the state of the tyre at that instant. Every lap you run, the tyre
is going off and sometimes at higher rates than others and different with
different drivers. If you have done three laps on a tyre in qualifying, when
you hit the track with it in a race you are already set back that amount. If
another guy has come out on a new tyre then he is ahead of you, so I think
there are phases in a race where you are quicker or slower than the people
you are racing but it can come back to you depending on your tyre choices.
That means the race result isn’t really known until the very end as we have
been seeing.
Q: Today I think you were testing a new floor and exhaust. How did that go?
Has any decision been made whether you are going to run that during the race
itself?
PL: Yeah, as I was saying earlier, we have got a lot of numbers to look at
and we will be boring into those during the night and deciding what to fit.
We have learned some things and I am sure some of the things that we have
tried today will have worked.
Q: So we won’t know until later?
PL: Yeah, and there is no big black or white answer. We have quite a few
different pieces to try.
Q: Aldo, three of you went back to Maranello. What was the purpose of that
and what was the conclusion you drew from going back to Maranello?
AC: The purpose is normal: go back home and spend a few days at home between
one race or another. It was not an emergency going back to Maranello. It was
already programmed. Of course, we have to catch up. We are quite behind, as
we have seen in the first two races, so at home people are really motivated
to progress and we were discussing, as usual, development programmes and
which bits we can bring to the races, how many parts we can anticipate at
what race and all this usual stuff. But being with a good awareness where we
are at this moment in terms of performance so people are really, really
pushing to catch up and really motivated to come back to the performance we
would like to have.
Q: The President has predicted an amazing reaction. Would you agree?
AC: We are here to do this job and we will try to do it for sure.
Q: Naoki, Renault have got off to a flying start, but the the big test
really is the pace of development. Do you think you can match the pace of
development of McLaren and Ferrari.
NT: Well, obviously, it is a big, big challenge to fight against these
strong teams, but I think in the past few years we have proven that we have
very good in-season development pace, so I don’t see any reason why we
cannot do this again this year.
Q: You have been on the podium two races so far. Can you maintain that?
NT: Yes, I hope so. I think one of the big differences this year is that the
roll-out performance of the car is higher than the past few years. I think
it is important to keep up the pace during the season and to make the point
constantly, so I hope we can keep up this pace.
Q: Geoff, the car is still incredibly new. Are you surprised at the pace
that seems to be in it?
GW: I think I am certainly very pleased with the pace. It has had a very
short gestation period. We started the design only in mid-December and it is
75-80 per cent a new car, and we clearly have had to take a number of short
cuts in terms of its aerodynamic performance. We have got a very limited CFD
programme, so one of the things we have been doing over the three race
events is exploring the aero map. We don’t have the sort of level or aero
map we would expect to have to optimise the set-up of the car, so we are
playing a lot with ride-heights and spring-rates, all sorts of things, to
try and reverse engineer what we have got with the car. At the same time we
have got quite a new group of people in the garage, so there is a lot of
learning to be done there. Usual sort of mistakes and quick improvements. It
is very impressive, in fact, over the last three race weekends how quickly
it has all come together. We did have quite an experienced group of
individuals designing the car but they hadn’t worked together and they were
certainly working in a distributed network and we have got a new group of
people in the garage. Again, I am very pleased that almost on a session by
session basis we make the car faster, we make decisions better. We still
make mistakes, but I hope we learn from them. It is difficult to say whether
it is better or worse than I thought. Starting from the restrictions we had
I think we have done an extremely good job but we are all very determined to
do a much, much better job. Looking back, there is a lot behind us and
looking forward there is a lot in front of us and we just need to keep
pushing every session, every race and bringing bits as fast as we possibly
can. And building the team, growing as we go.
Q: How worried are you still about the 107 percent rule?
GW: Looking at today’s times, not so worried. I certainly wouldn’t want to
get complacent about it but I think, judging what we can, with track
improvement, fuel loads, tyre selection and run length, I think we are
probably a little bit better than we were in Sepang.
Q: James, you’ve obviously had a fantastic couple of races. Very interesting
to see how you’ve managed the tyres. You seem to have been concentrating on
getting one less pit stop than everybody else. Is that something that was
originally designed in the car, or was it something that happened in
Australia and you’ve been concentrating on since?
JK: I think it’s a bit of both. Obviously everyone had to design their cars
without really understanding the tyres. Although Pirelli did a good job of
giving up front information to everyone, it was always very provisional, you
had to treat it a little bit cautiously because they were still developing
the way the tyres were going to be and we didn’t really know until winter
testing what we would get. So from our side, we wanted to try and leave our
options open with the way we set the car up, as much as possible. It was a
more complicated car compared to last year with the number of options of
mechanical set-up and so on. And it has allowed us, to a certain extent, to
adapt to using the tyres in what we feel is an efficient way. It has its
downsides. In Melbourne, for example, we had to use three laps to qualify
but then we were able to do one stop. I think with the Melbourne situation,
as I said, the tyres behaved in a very different way to perhaps what we
expected. I think both drivers also did a very good job of saving the tyres
through that event. We didn’t plan a one stop but it became apparent on
about lap 45, I think. So from that point forward, we felt that we can
genuinely look at less stops because the drivers and the car seem to be able
to hang onto the tyres. We had a slight hint that we were fairly kind to the
tyres in winter testing but as I say, it was such a different situation in
the winter compared to what we’re seeing now that we couldn’t read too much
into that.
Q: And now it seems that everybody else is looking to do exactly what you’ve
been doing with one less stop.
JK: Possibly, yeah. I think, to be honest, the two stop in Malaysia was kind
of on the edge of how far we could push that. Again, that was down to some
good tyre management by the drivers really, but it paid dividends as well. I
think a three stop and a two stop are roughly the same time, but the two
stop had less risk and at the end of the race we were twenty seconds ahead
of a guy who was doing three stops who we were racing with, so it worked out
for us.
QUESTIONS FROM THE FLOOR
Q: Andrea Cremonesi (La Gazzetta dello Sport) Two questions for Aldo Costa:
the first is about the drivers. You talked before that there is some
difference understanding the tyres between the two drivers. I would like to
know which is the driver who understands the tyres better, between Fernando
and Felipe. The second question is: today Fernando had new parts on the car,
new front wing, new brake ducts. It was slower than Felipe; what does that
mean when choosing these parts for the race or not?
AC: Regarding Fernando and Felipe understanding the tyres; I think both are
doing quite a lot for the team to give feedback, information, comments. At
this moment there isn’t a big difference between the two in terms of how
they wear the tyres in the last race. Maybe Felipe is a bit more in
difficulty in cold conditions with the harder tyres, so we are trying to
understand that and trying to help him in that respect.
In terms of the development that we have done today; yes, we have tested
aerodynamic components. If it was so easy to decide, just looking at the lap
time, we wouldn’t be here because we can stay at home and look at the lap
times and then decide from there. Fortunately, there are, as Paddy said,
tons of data. It’s very difficult to test during a Friday with a limited
amount of tyres and also tyres which are not in constant condition. So there
is a lot of data to analyse and we will be busy all this afternoon, trying
to understand which configuration has got more potential and then make a
decision for tomorrow.
Q: (Joe Saward – Grand Prix Special) After the last Grand Prix in Malaysia,
the fastest lap list had Sebastian Vettel sixth, one second behind Mark
Webber, which suggests that in the course of the race he might have gone a
lot faster. Do you think that is a realistic reading of how far ahead the
Red Bull is at the moment, or do you think the qualifying numbers are more
realistic?
PL: That’s a difficult question, you know that. Impossible to know exactly
where any of your competitors are, but particularly if the guy’s in the
lead, you don’t know how much margin he’s left. I don’t know that Sebastian
was really being chased particularly hard throughout the whole race and
perhaps if he had been, we would know more. Certainly, we felt that if Lewis
had managed to keep P2 on the first lap, he could have put him under more
pressure potentially and we may have seen a very different race. I certainly
don’t think that Red Bull are cruising. I think they’re feeling the
pressure, we saw that in qualifying, in particular, in Malaysia.
Q: (Ted Kravitz - BBC Sport) This is for Aldo and James. James, you’re
running essentially the back end of a Ferrari - minus the rear wing - the
engine, the gearbox, the KERS. Do you understand why the Ferrari seems to be
essentially a quicker car and Aldo, do you understand why the Sauber can do
one stop less than you in races?
JK: I think that what we get from Ferrari… obviously the KERS and engine,
which are units which we build into the car. There are some architectural
differences or let’s say some influences architecturally that they have but
fundamentally they are units that we put in the car. The gearbox is probably
the biggest part of what we’re supplied which influences the way in which we
have to deal with the car, so the rear suspension obviously picks up off the
gearbox, it’s our design but the pick-up points are pre-determined although
we worked closely with Ferrari and where they were headed with the ‘box for
this year and that works out as a pretty good process. I think that the rest
of the car is really down to the philosophy that’s supplied by the team and
I think we would expect Ferrari to be a bit quicker than us, because they
are, traditionally, a championship-winning team ultimately and we’re not
quite in that league yet. I think we picked up what we were given, we had
some decent discussions at an early stage with Ferrari, but then it’s really
down to us to put the rest of the package together, and obviously that’s the
mechanical side. The aero side clearly plays a huge role in this and you’ve
got to match your mechanical and your aero together to get the car to work
properly and so on, and the front suspension needs to work in tune with the
way the rear of the car is so the philosophy is that it’s the whole car and
the parts we get supplied play a part in that, but not a huge part.
AC: Yeah, not a lot to add. We supply the power train, all the rest is
different, so in terms of tyre management, for example, you can have
different suspension geometry, even if, as James said, starting with the
pick-up points on the gearbox have to be the same so you can have different
suspension geometry, different set-up as well as different aerodynamic
development, so you may have a car that is easier on the tyres, thanks to
the good job they have done. So it’s very possible.
Q: (Joe Saward – Grand Prix Special) I want an answer from all of you this
time: how many teams do you think will win races this year?
PL: At least two. Is that good enough?
AC: Let’s hope three!
JK: I guess to follow on from that, about five, isn’t it? We will see. It’s
the first couple of races of a long season.
And just going back to your other point, Joe, what Paddy said before about
the number of tyres you run dictates a lot about how quick your car looks.
We did two stops with Kamui, for example, we never really shone with our lap
times because we had to string the stints out whereas Webber did four stops
or something, I think, so he was able to push a little bit more, so there
may be something in that.
GW: I’m a little bit between two or four, the reason being that I think
there are four possible contenders but sometimes the way seasons end up, two
get shut out fighting each other for that opportunity. I think you can guess
which.
NT: I think I would chose on the higher side, so four and the reason being
that this year there are a lot of factors which add uncertainty to the races
such as tyres, DRS and KERS. I think all of these combined will increase the
volatility during the race, so I would expect four teams at least and of
course I hope Renault is one of them.
Q: Andrea Cremonesi (La Gazzetta dello Sport) Mr Lowe, we know that McLaren
made a big effort to catch up the Red Bulls. I would like to know if you can
describe to us how big this effort was, something that might be obvious to
you but not for us?
PL: I think this has been written about a fair deal in the press, but we had
a philosophy that we followed in conceiving the car through the winter
testing. I think that quite honestly, our ambitions exceed our ability to
deliver, so fairly late on, through the winter testing, we realised we
needed to regroup and consider a different design, something that we would
actually know how to make and get on the car reliably. I think it’s also
worth pointing out that the car was desperately unreliable, actually,
through the tests in February but not all as a consequence of this subject
that we’re talking about, so we had a range of issues which we fortunately
managed to sort out. On the exhaust philosophy, we jumped ship, effectively,
to a new design concept. I think it’s a great credit to the team that they
were able to learn how to exploit that in such a short space of time because
I think one of the features of Formula One and the development amongst the
teams is that we work together as a team, we follow philosophies. It’s not
always easy to look at what other people are doing and say ‘OK, he’s quick,
let me just copy what he’s doing’, because a lot of these things are a
consequence of actually, at times, years of development and a philosophy
that gets you performance that’s unique to the style of your team. I think
that’s one of the things that makes Formula One very interesting. Aldo’s car
is very very different to my car and yet the lap times in the end are very
very similar as a consequence of many many years of building up an approach
in each team, completely separately. So I think great credit to our team
that we can take a completely different design and literally, in a matter of
days, turn that into something that was competitive for Australia and then
great that the drivers were able to exploit that and we got some reasonable
results.
Q: (Julien Febreau - L’Equipe) Mr Costa, we know how important it is to find
the same results on the track as in the wind tunnel. Is it a concern for you
at the moment and could it explain your problems a bit?
AC: In the winter development, in the last test, we have tested a lot of new
components and as I already said, some of them are not delivering the
performance expected, so we started an investigation so we are doing
correlation job between the track and the wind tunnel, trying to understand
why that should be. A Formula One car, these days, is a very very complex
aerodynamic machine so there are a lot of vortices that can interfere one
with the other. It’s not only happened to us, it’s happened from time to
time that developments are not bringing the expected performance. So we are
doing this investigation and we think that by Turkey we should be able to
answer all our questions. |
