Brazil: Geoffrey Willis talks in the Friday Five

By Phil Huff
September 24 2005

BAR Honda's Technical Director, Geoffrey Willis, took time out of his schedule to sit in the Friday Five Press Conference yesterday, talking of V8's, aerodynamics and, of course, Takuma Sato and Rubens Barrichello.

We have all been impressed with reliability, but how marginal has it been? Has it really been that tough to make these engines to last two races and also to get the cars to the end?

I think the level of skill and professionalism in the sport has steadily got better and better and compared to two or three years ago we are now running engines that are significantly lighter, more powerful, running for about five times as long, but then all the rest of the car is also extremely reliable. There is a strong level of competition so you are seeing people having to engineer their designs right close to the edge of their performance. So it is down to their procedures and processes and the very formal ways that people are working on their cars and engines to maintain that level of performance as well as that level of reliability. So yes, it is very tough, reliability has always been part of any sort of motor racing and it is as important now as it always has been.

I thought you were going to be a bit more competitive than you have in the last three or four races, I thought you were going to work up to quite a bit of a climax at the end of the season.

We did want to be more competitive towards the end of the season, we are certainly still trying very hard, we have brought new things for the car this weekend and we still have more new things for the last two races. It is tough, we are seeing a hard battle at the front and both of those cars are improving steadily and the whole field now improves their cars throughout the season so simply standing still is not good enough and to stand still relative to the grid you have to make a lot of developments. It has been a tough year for us, we are still understanding and working out where we have not been competitive, we have some very strong parts of the car and engine package and some parts are not so strong and right at the moment the drive for us is as well as to try to improve performance this year is to try to solve our problems so we are in a good position for the start of next year.

You now have your two drivers for next year, what happens to Takuma?

The only thing that is fixed is our race driver line-up for next year with Rubens and Jenson. Discussions continue between the team and Honda and Takuma about his opportunities for next year and the rest of our driver line-up for next year, including third driver if third driver is required, and test driver is still ongoing.

Has any decision been made about third drivers?

I have heard some discussion about which teams... I really don't know. At the moment we are working on the likelihood it will be the same set of regulations as this year.

Can I ask you if there is any more progress on resolving the FIA's suggestion of a downforce limit in Formula One, and how that may be policed if that does get introduced?

The proposal for a downforce limit is addressed in two areas, as I understand. Both are considering a way to have a limit to the performance of the cars and try and have a long-term limit and control of performance, and also is part of an idea to improve the show, making it possible for the cars to race closer to each other and for there to be more overtaking. I am not sure necessarily, it is going to achieve either or both targets. In terms of limiting performance it is important that we try to find a regulation that gives us a stable set of technical regulations that we can explore without having to waste a lot of time and effort re-adjusting the regulations, finding a new solution, finding possibly unexpected consequences of the race-ability of the cars, so I think having the idea of imposing a downforce limit is an interesting concept, quite how we can achieve that is another point but then, as well as the performance, we’ve got to go back to the racing side and I’m not sure it’s been any way proven yet that a downforce limit is what we need to improve the spectacle of overtaking. There are a number of formula out there, GP2 currently, IRL, which are showing that by changing the nature of the downforce generation on the car, to put rather more into the underbody of the car, and rather less onto the wings of the car does seem to be encouraging close racing or certainly the ability to follow closely. I think there are a number of things that we’re going to have to look at. We need to do this on a pretty scientific basis to find out that we do come up with a set of regulations that really does achieve these two quite difficult and different challenges of performance limitation and improvement of the show.

I would like your thoughts on Toyota's progress this year. They've made a big step, but has that been flattered slightly by the fact that, besides Renault, you have not had the best of seasons, and also, how difficult will it be for Toyota, a relatively new team, to maintain this upwardly momentum in '06?

They clearly have made a lot better job of the task this year than last year and the challenge is always, as you build up in the level of your competition in the business, knowing why you are quick or why you are better or why you are worse. Any one year is very important for you to be able to continue that from year to year so I’m sure they will continue to be a serious player in the business but like us, they will be needing to work out what they have done well this year and what they have not done well this year in order to do better next year.

A specific question as to what you are expecting from Rubens on the very first day of your co-operation, I mean in testing in November or December? Are you expecting to make him work on a specific area or to let him give you his general feeling of the package, and are you expecting he will give you new technical direction immediately?

First thing I should probably say before Ross jumps on me is that he won't be driving our car until the new year, that's my understanding of our contractual arrangement. Certainly we'll be looking forward to his contributions, his observations on our car. I gather from all the information to hand that he has a good understanding what he likes in a car, he has good technical understanding of a car, and I think we're very much looking forward to working with him, and I think the team's very fired up for next year.

You've had quite extensive experience of running a V8 now and I wonder if you've noticed any unusual anomalies or any kind of weird characteristics which you hadn't expected and whether we'll see F1 cars next year perhaps being a little bit different from what they are this year?

Well, I suppose the correct answer is that we are planning not to have any anomalies with a V8. We did run a V8 earlier this season, very much in very early prototype form. Since then, Honda have been working on more stages of prototypes, a lot of dyno running, and we will be back running when testing starts again after the end of the season. Certainly, I personally don't have any experience of running a V8 in Formula One but Honda have a lot of experience running V8s and it's a very big programme for them, and I think we will be well prepared for next year. As Ross says, the exciting bit and the difficult bit about a big change in the rules is you don’t really know where the benchmark is and I think that will be quite interesting for the early testing of the V8s when all the teams are trying to work out whether they have got it right and whether they are strong in the right areas. As well as being reduced capacity in a V8, we also have other changes. There are some material changes in the engine for cost control reasons and also the removal of the moving trumpets. That will have an effect on the torque characteristics of the engine, particularly during the start which is another new challenge and something we won’t have a good measure on until we get track testing.

Do you think McLaren may have established a decisive performance advantage this year which would lead to a period of domination in the sport for the next two or three years or do you think too much will change next year for that to take place?

I think at the moment McLaren would appear to have the strongest car but appear not to be able to turn it into success with the result that they are clearly not in the strongest position in the Drivers' championship at the moment. I think the last year has probably shown that past performance is not necessarily a good guide to future performance and I hope – certainly from our position at BAR Honda, we are very much hoping the performance order for the next few years is not fixed because it's certainly our intention to catch up and take that top of the table. But certainly they've done a very good job this year, but also Pat and his guys have done a very good job and they are winning at the moment.