Briatore talks it all at interview!

By role
October 25 2004

The season is over and Flavio Briatore sits for some minute with a journalist from the Spanish Press Agency EFE. Renault has been in the limelight in the last few races on their fight with BAR for the second place at the Constructors Championship.

A fight they have ended up loosing by 15 points. The team has not seen a double point finish in 9 races, since the French Grand Prix and the announcement at Germany by Trulli that he was leaving the team.

However, Briatore, is satisfied to have finished 3rd and to have been able to achieve the ambitious goals they set themselves at the start.

“I make a good balance of the season because our goal was to finish third on the Constructor’s Championaship and that goeal was an ambitious one. Everybody forget that this season we have started with completely a new engine. We almost finished second on the Championshop and since we have not been able to do it maybe we are a bit disappointed. But we have to see that in front of us we only have Ferrari and BAR that have been doing a great job in the last seven years with the chassis and the engine.” Said Briatore.

Renault had to take the decision with three races left to let go Jarno Trulli and to hire Jacques Villeneuve in their quest to continue the challenge for second. However, Villeneuve paid for his lack of pace and his lack of knowledge of th car. Some insiders have said that the best thing would have been to place test driver Montagny on the car:

“It is easy to talk after things happen. I believe the team is hapy with Villeneuve and Franck did not have a problem with the decision. Anyhow, Franck’s times on the tests were far from the ones of the racing drivers, when usually is the other way around since the racing driver goes to the tests more relaxed. I think it was good to give Jacques the chance because we needed a change. Looking at it I do not know if it was a good choice because Villeneuve has not scotred in the last three races but Jarno had not scored on the last six.” Said the Italian manager.

The best time of the year quite surprisingly came thanks to Trulli winning at the Monaco Grand Prix. However, for Briatore is more important the cohesion of the entire team:

”For me the key is the team, is not a victory by Jarno. If the team is happy and the drivers are happy, I am happy. That’s the important part. That the team works. To methe best times this year were when the team was working really well.” He added. “My relation with Trulli is not broken at all. We had a problem but in a professional level, that we have to separate from the personal one. I can go and have lunch or dinner with him at any time. I have no problems with him. The problem is that I manage a team, not a person. My team has to be motivated and Jarno was not motivated.”

Much has been said about the future of Flavio Briatore at the helm of the Renault F1 team and very recently there has been rumours of him being replaced by Alain Prost:

“Many people talk about it. Two months ago I was in Toyota, last month in Ferrari…I do not read the papers anymore. At this time I do not know what will happen. I know that I have a contract until the end of 2005. Now we have a tough winter ahead of us and we’ll have to see how tings go at the beginning of the season. We’ll see how it goes.”

Flavio has lots of faith on Alonso and he is one of the many in paddock who believes that the young Spaniard one day will be a World Champion:



“All those who believe his season has not been good, I can only say that is garbage. He has worked quite hard this year and is much more inside the team now. Besides, the car this year was much harder to drive and in spite of that he really had three or four brilliant races. He also made some mistakes, as everyone else. We are al humans, nobody is perfect. But this has been in my opinion the best season of Alonso. He has worked quite well, he finished fourth on the championship and I am happy for him. His race at Brazil has been sensational.” Said Briatore. “ I have no doubt that he’ll be World Champion one day. The same that I said about Schumacher. IF Formula 1 continues to be like it is today or like I hope that will continue to be he will be Champion during many years.”

Flavio wanted to leave one clear point about Alonso:

“I believe Alonso is an important part, for this team and for everybody. And I believe deserves more respect from the press, he deserves full support because he has earned it.”