Sepang Friday press conference – Part III

Following the first day of practice at the Malaysian Grand Prix, Patrick Head (Williams), John Howett (Toyota), Mario Theissen (BMW Sauber), and Geoff Willis are the guests at the FIA Friday press conference. Q: (Anthony Rowlinson - Autosport) Patrick, how long can an independent team continue to be competitive against a manufacturer in the current era of Formula One? PH: I suppose it depends on how good they are at generating their funding and whether they spend their money wisely. I think if you looked at the Renault budget for last year, both engine and car, you’d find it probably only the fourth, fifth or sixth biggest budget out there, so efficiency is a very important part and equally, it’s fairly well known, the sort of magnitude of money that we’re paying Cosworth for the engine this year, it’s certainly very much less than 20 million Euro, and I mean by a long way, and I would have to say that I’m very happy to be running a Cosworth engine. I think it’s fully competitive and relative to some, a more than competitive engine and Cosworth are not making a loss on that engine. But as testing gets limited more, which inevitably it will, it will put more emphasis onto the simulation tools, both virtual and physical that you have within your facility, and some of those simulation tools are pretty expensive and I mentioned beforehand – I’m not complaining about it but we had to de-bug our gearbox out on the track.
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It would have been much more efficient and much more clinical if we could have de-bugged it on a more sophisticated transmission dyno than we have available to us. These sort of facilities will certainly, in the longer term, be very useful, but to be precise in terms of saying how long, I suppose it depends if Max (Mosley, FIA President) is successful on what he has been talking about which is to try and reduce the slope of spend against performance. Q: (Niki Takeda - Formula PA) Question for all of you: honest and frank thoughts on a standard ECU, please? JH: It’s a difficult one. I think in principal, most of the manufacturers would prefer freedom with the ECU, at least the actual cost of the ECU itself is not of an extreme magnitude. OK, one would probably need to be more draconian in restricting electronic capacity to significantly reduce the cost area. I think there is an issue of actually ensuring that there is no artificial aids which are intended to be eliminated, such as traction control in the future, and therefore by having a standard ECU it may make it very easy to police and avoid any rumours of a certain team having this capability or not and I believe that’s one of the reasons that the FIA wishes to integrate the actual standard ECU, but I think as a preference we would prefer to keep freedom.

GW: Not really my area to comment that much apart from the fact that in both road car engine design and in race car engine design the engine hardware and the controller is very much thought of as a complete package, so it’s a thing where an engine manufacturer, a car manufacturer would always normally want to be developing engine and ECU together so in that sense, it’s something we would rather keep and not go to an independent third party. The other issue from the team side is that changing ECUs and changing all the integrated code with it and the software the team uses is a very big challenge and there’s not a lot of time between now and the beginning of 2008 and none of us would want to be starting on January 1, 2008 with a new system. We want to be trying to test it earlier so I think there’s a pretty tight timescale. PH: I’m not convinced that it automatically follows that if you have a standard ECU that there’s no more possibility of some sort of power modulation but if we all get put to a standard ECU then those of us, few of us, with devious minds will turn their attention to other means. I did actually…Niki, I lost the ‘and’ between your first two words. I thought you said ‘honest Frank’ and I thought, who’s this? (Laughter) But you said ‘honest and frank.’ But it’s a change and I can understand that a lot of people like BMW, building their own ECUs, it’s an interesting challenge for them which I’m sure has some relevance and some knock-on to their road car development and it must feel very uncomfortable for engineers to be told ‘no, you can’t do this, no you can’t do a job in that area’ and be given what will probably be a fairly middle-of-the-road type piece of hardware, it doesn’t feel very Formula One-ish but anyway, that’s what we’re told we’re getting and it seems it’s still Max and Bernie’s game so that’s what we’ve got to play. MT: As we understand, the original aim was to rule out artificial driver aids and we fully support that, even if road cars have it, we want to see the best drivers out here and want them to cope with the car at the limit and that is certainly more exciting without driver aids. We have had talks between the manufacturers and some teams, I think it was a year ago – at least a year ago – about how to achieve that, and we came to the conclusion that it should be possible to do that with a controlled section, accessible to the FIA, to make sure that there are not artificial driver aids. We would prefer to go along this route because, as Geoff said, today there is not the mechanical parts, components, development on one hand and the electronics components on the other hand. Virtually everything comes with its electronics and virtually every functionality is controlled electronically. So in order to have the possibility to test new functionalities, we would need to have access to the electronics and then you are immediately down to the question: what is standardised? Is it a certain area of the hardware, is it the basic software as well, even, as the application software? It’s quite a difficult and tricky area, so, as I said, we would prefer to have a common standard which ensures that there is no driver aids and it cannot even be perceived to be there but then to do our own stuff in order to use the same stuff for testing and racing. Q: (Niki Takeda - Formula PA) Mario, can I follow up on that? What is currently the definition of a standard ECU then? MT: There is no precise definition, especially not when it comes to software.

Sepang Friday press conference – Part II

Following the first day of practice at the Malaysian Grand Prix, Patrick Head (Williams), John Howett (Toyota), Mario Theissen (BMW Sauber), and Geoff Willis are the guests at the FIA Friday press conference. Q: (Anne Giuntini – L’Equipe) I would like from all of you to know what is your opinion about the new qualifying format? MT: I think it is exciting, I love it, I think the spectators will love it. It is one hour full of action, three runs, and I think it is the best way we ever had. You can always talk about refining it, question of going with or without fuel, how to deal with that, but altogether I really like it. PH: I think Mario is right. It is certainly exciting and quite tense in the garage and of course with Kimi’s accident and the big rush then going out it was certainly quite tricky and I think it particularly did not work out in Ralf’s favour. Basically you got one lap and if you happen to have a slow car in front of you when you go out, your are in big trouble. The only bit that is a bit dubious and I think the crowd will find rather difficult to understand is this business of having fuel in for the last practice and then while the cars are going round seemingly not doing quick laps and obviously the influence of the weight of the fuel is huge. When this qualifying format was first proposed it was on the basis of not carrying fuel in any of the three qualifying sessions and that probably would have caused a problem at the time had the tyre situation stayed the same.
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But with us being able to change tyres at the pit stop as I understand it being proposed at the same time, personally I would be happy to have all three sessions on low fuel, but as Mario says there is room to trim as the basic format is pretty good but I think the FIA are not really willing to trim race to race. If they are going to make a change it will be at least mid season, I think, and obviously after some discussions with the teams. GW: Well I think it was great fun, something we had studied in a lot of details and rehearsed a lot and made the specific preparations for handling the cars, particularly in the last session, trying to get the cars with their tyres changed simultaneously. Having said that, having practiced everything and rehearsed everything, I think the first session showed that you could revert on the edge of getting it wrong badly, so there is a lot of learning during the first weekend. It will be interesting to see what the qualifying brings up this weekend. I am sure everybody will learn again for a couple of more races and it will settle down. But it is very busy and there is no room for error and that certainly is a challenge, a challenge we will enjoy.

JH: I think the qualifying we have to look at it from a consumer’s point of view, the public. From inside the team it is a pretty exciting format. It is very busy but we have all the times so we can see. I think the key point really is to see what television viewers also think about the format and whether they can really follow it. And I think there seems to be some mixed reactions. So for the end consumer we have perhaps to wait a bit longer but from within the teams and probably for track action it is a very positive move. Q: (James Roberts – Motorsport News) Patrick, what did you think when you saw Villeneuve’s BMW retire in Bahrain? PH: A loaded question. That was quite interesting really, because I was called up on Wednesday to be asked whether I’d come here and I said to Silvia, who rang me up, Mario Theissen being asked as well? I’m not sure if I got a reply there, but I thought ‘this is a set-up’. You’re so busy during a race that you’re not really looking too often at what’s going on on other cars but I don’t think tears welled up in my eyes. Q: (Tetsuo Tsugawa - Tetsu Enterprise) After last Bahrain race, what did you think about Scuderia Toro Rosso’s V10 engine? Do you think we need more restrictions or to change the rules, or just keep going? PH: Mario’s really the one to talk about it, but I think from what I’ve seen of power curves, run at its maximum, it’s certainly below the V8 from Cosworth. The thing about it is that it’s so under-stressed, in effect, that it can be run at its maximum every lap of the race, every lap of qualifying, every lap of practice. That gives a certain advantage. The other thing is that it would have been a much bigger problem, I think, if one of the manufacturer teams had decided to go that route because the Cosworth V10 engine never had variable trumpets and as I understand it, it has not been optimum-tuned for the lower revs, for the restricted intake, and I’m sure that for any of the manufacturers - because you are allowed to run with those engines in exactly 2005 specification, so with variable trumpets, if you’d re-done the camshafts and the ports and all the rest of it, to optimise it for those rules - I’m sure there would be a few people howling like hell now. Providing it’s only the Cosworth V10 and it doesn’t get developed to be optimised for that, then it brings another team out there which wouldn’t otherwise be out there but I’m not sure that Colin Kolles from Midland feels the same way, but I don’t have a problem with it. But Mario’s opinion, I think, is probably more significant. MT: I see three advantages of a restricted V10. One is peak power, even if you apply the restrictions in a very rude way by putting in a plate into the air trumpet, I would expect it to have a higher peak power – maybe not too much. Second one is higher torque, which should put you in a position at the start to overtake maybe one or two cars, and at the exit of a corner, to accelerate much quicker. That’s what we saw in Bahrain. And the third advantage is, as Patrick said, that this engine is good for several thousand kilometres and you can basically go at qualifying pace throughout the race. Those are the major differences from a technical perspective. JH: I think that the only thing you have to recognise is that the FIA have indicated that they will change the restriction or the peak power of the engine if they determine it is necessary, and therefore it would be very difficult for any of the main manufacturer teams or main teams to really consider that, because you don’t really know what could happen between one race and the other, and I think that should be considered as another element.

Q: (Niki Takeda - Formula PA) The third car facility has been questioned recently; would you like to see that reviewed? PH: I would have to say that we are very happy with the third car facility and I think last year I’m sure Ron Dennis was very happy with the third car facility. It was actually proposed, I think, for some of the teams nearer the back of the grid to be able to have paying drivers on a Friday and it certainly isn’t being used in that way. But on the other hand, it is a bit of an advantage to the lower teams and therefore, as a corollary disadvantage for the upper teams. I would have to say that they are probably happy about it this year and I hope to be in a position where we are unhappy about it next year. MT: Similar view. It certainly is an advantage especially now, in the early phase of the season because, as we discussed before, everybody is concerned about reliability and keeps engine or car mileage low. We are happy to benefit from that. Maybe we can change it after every team benefited from it for one year – don’t know if that works out. On the other hand, you have to see what would happen without the third cars on Friday. Certainly the teams who have a third car, their race drivers would maybe do a few laps more but not too many, and now at least, we have some cars going around on a full programme. Robert Kubica did 49 laps today and together with the third drivers that was quite interesting to watch. JH: Clearly it’s an advantage, but as we don’t have it, it sounds sour grapes to say you can’t. I think you just have to live with the rules as they are, but clearly we did gain advantage from it from the last two years with Ricardo driving on the Friday, no question. GW: Yes, I agree with everything that’s been said. It’s clearly an advantage for us but maybe it’s just a way of helping to mix up the grid to try and give a little bit of a penalty to the top four teams and a little bit of a bonus to the following teams to maybe avoid teams just running away. It keeps you having to work hard.

Sepang Friday press conference - Part I

With Head, Howett, Theissen & WillisFollowing the first day of practice at the Malaysian Grand Prix, Patrick Head (Williams), John Howett (Toyota), Mario Theissen (BMW Sauber), and Geoff Willis are the guests at the FIA Friday press conference.
Q: Geoff, you have a new driver this year in Rubens Barrichello. What has he brought to the team? Geoff WILLIS: I think he brings a lot of experience of how to win. He’s won nine races, I think. He’s been with a championship-winning team for many years. Certainly, he strengthens our driver line-up hugely, and he brings that experience, that knowledge of what it feels like to win and makes us a stronger team, so it’s been good working with him. Let’s see how we do this weekend.
Q: Does he tell you much about Ferrari? GW: Certainly, he’s used to working in a slightly different environment, how they operate certain technical aspects of the car. The driver can often explain what the car feels like, the way he thinks it operates and other bits about the car, but generally the teams don’t tell the drivers an awful lot about the cars that other teams might be interested in, so it’s really just his experience, how he feels the car and how he wants to work on the car.
Q: You have a third driver again, having not had one last year but having had one the year before that. Is it more of a benefit now than it was two years ago? GW: It’s certainly very useful this year because, unlike in 2004, when we had just one engine to last just one race weekend, we have an engine to last two race weekends, so even more we are biasing the running on a Friday to the third driver. Anthony’s been with the team for a long time, he’s very quick, very consistent and our race drivers have got a lot of confidence in reading what he says about the car. So it’s certainly very useful for us.
Q: You certainly did a job with him today, getting him back out again at the end. GW: I’m not quite sure how the car came back so quickly, but we got a call from Charlie Whiting to say we would get it back so we were well prepared.
Q: Was there any damage to it? GW: Only after I think the marshals got to it and they pushed it into the gravel, and we had quite a lot of gravel to take out of it which wasn’t there when Anthony left it.
Q: We’re seeing fewer and fewer laps from the drivers on the Fridays; do you think there is a case for making Friday an unlimited test day?

GW: I think it would be very difficult to make it a useable test day. Typically, on a test day, we are getting quite a lot of cars going round, we’re running six or seven hours. We can probably achieve 500+ kilometres. It is also difficult coming to a race track, where usually there hasn’t been anything on the circuit for at least a week, if not longer than that, so the circuit conditions are fairly poor on the first day. So I think there is not an awful lot that we would learn and part of the reason why a lot of the race drivers don’t go out in the first session on Friday is just because the circuit conditions are not really very useful. Q: John, today Jarno Trulli was eleventh. Was this a little bit of relief after last weekend? John HOWETT: Well, yes, I suppose you can say a slight relief but obviously a very disappointing start to the season, and not really where we expect to be or want to be. So we have to work a lot harder. We are getting a bit more temperature into the tyres here so it’s helping, but still we have to work hard. It’s clear that we’re not where we need to be and how competitive we should be. Q: Was it tyre choice or a little bit of how the chassis used the tyres? JH: I think it’s the way the chassis is utilising the tyre. We can’t condemn the tyre because we clearly had very similar rubber to both Williams and McLaren in Bahrain and it’s the way we are actually utilising the rubber. Q: We talked about the third driver; you don’t have one this year. Are you missing him? JH: Yes, clearly. It did help a lot last year (having one) but I think it’s part of the route to the top and you just have to learn to cope without that. As you notice, we did a lot of laps today with both race drivers. Q: Have you had to build that factor into the race engines this year? JH: Well, I think we have a strong engine but obviously we hadn’t planned that sort of mileage on a Friday, so we have to see how the engine stands up to the pressure it’s had today in a fairly hot environment. Q: Now Mike Gascoyne is still back in Germany, I believe. Was that a knee-jerk reaction from last weekend? JH: Not knee-jerk. He’s here tomorrow but he’s obviously stayed in the factory an extra two days just to keep the pressure on and look for further improvements. Q: You’ve got a massive build programme as well, haven’t you? JH: Yes, that’s correct. That’s part of it. Q: Mario, your third driver, Robert Kubica has been impressive this year; what are your thoughts on him? Mario THEISSEN: Yes, absolutely. Obviously we watched him last year and on that basis we contracted him, but we didn’t know too much about him. He’s only 21-years old, he hadn’t seen these overseas tracks before: Bahrain and Sepang were both new to him, and we couldn’t expect him to be so quick on pace. He didn’t make any mistakes. Over the two days he has accumulated a lot of mileage, always did his programme perfectly and he’s even quite good at reporting to the engineers, so very useful data. I think he’s a very promising guy. Q: After Jacques Villeneuve’s engine failure in Bahrain, are you worried about the same thing happening to Nick Heidfeld here? MT: It’s true that Nick’s engine is built to the same specification as Jacques’. On the other hand, the failure had never happened before, this type of failure. So far, we can only assume it was one faulty part in the engine, and so we don’t feel a reason to change Nick’s engine, we will see. Every engine manufacturer is concerned about engine life here, especially in Sepang, where a V8 goes into the second weekend. It’s a hot race and I think we will see something over the weekend.

Q: You’re building up a new team from the basis of Sauber; what still has to be done? Is there a huge amount still? MT: Yes, of course. I can say that I’m proud of what the team has done over the past eight months, but that was only the start to a programme of several years. We have decided to take on more than 100 additional people. The team is really small compared to our competitors. We started last summer with 275 people in Switzerland. Now we have 320, still one to two hundred fewer than our competitors. We have decided to expand the factory, which will only start this summer, so I’m happy if we have everything in place by the end of ’07. Q: Patrick, a lot of people see you as an independent team again, therefore they see your performance in Bahrain as very praiseworthy. What were your impressions? Patrick HEAD: Obviously it was encouraging to get two cars in the points, and both cars ran reliably through the weekend. In developing our transmission, a lot of it had to be done at the track because we didn’t have the facilities to do it on the dyno. So we spent rather a lot of time in the garage looking shrapnel round the back of the car over the winter, so that rather interrupted our winter testing which wasn’t ideal, but I was happy. I don’t think we’re ever going to get too excited about a sixth and a seventh but it was very pleasing to see Nico’s charge having made a mistake at the beginning of the race and unfortunately to Nick Heidfeld’s detriment but it was very encouraging. Q: Last year, we saw you doing few laps in practice, thinking it was conserving the BMW engine but it seems that that continues with Cosworth. What is the thinking behind that? PH: Particularly with a new engine, obviously we’ve done a number of double race distances or double race simulations and things over the winter, but I doubt that anybody has really done enough to say 100 percent that they know exactly where they are in their engine life. I think Honda, as you will have seen from the testing mileage, have done easily the most and even they have probably not been absolutely 100 percent. So the best thing, particularly with the opportunity to run a third car on the Friday, the best thing is to limit the amount of running and get the best out of it in qualifying the race. Q: But how much does Nico suffer from that, particularly on the circuits he doesn’t know? PH: He was due to do a few more laps this afternoon but we had a small fuel system problem that shouldn’t have happened but it did. He seems quite happy with the track and knowing the track. He doesn’t think he’s at a disadvantage. Q: A general question for you all on the testing agreement; could someone clarify 1) if it’s been signed and 2) what is consists of? GW: I’m not sure I can clarify how many have signed it, whether it’s completely signed. PH: It’s signed by everybody now. GW: It’s very similar to the testing agreement that was agreed by nine teams last year. The number of days is slightly more and there’s a little bit of detail tidy-up about how you use… you can nominate your home circuit and on those conditions you can count for a half car day rather than if you use a single car on that track. So certain teams have circuits which they can only use one car on and so we’ve agreed that we can all nominate one circuit that allows you to count – if you only run one car on it – half a day. So in general I think it’s pretty consistent. It gives a realistic target cap on distance per day, the number of days per year, so I think it’s fairly well understood that it will keep us in a sensible position on testing.

PH: Yes, I think it’s an outer perimeter on testing but I think the most significant thing is that we’ve at least got back to a common agreement between all teams, so it’s a good platform to work on. Q: This is a question I’ve been asked to ask about the measurement of rear wings: is there another way of measuring rear wings, the flex that might appear, that you would want to see, that you would be happy with? GW: I’ll have another go at it. The issue about the flexibility of rear wings is a difficult one because clearly all engineering structures do deflect. The question is whether you are allowed to make performance benefit from that, and the FIA – Charlie Whiting – has clarified on several occasions that you are not. The difficulty is what sort of test you come up with that is safe to perform in parc ferme conditions because the rear wings do have very significant loads on them that you probably wouldn’t want to place on the car in parc ferme in case they fell off and hurt somebody. The designs of the wings that people have used in the past and certainly have either allowed what we call the slot gap – the gap between the first element and the second element of the wing to either close up or to open up and by doing so change the drag and the lift on the car, and you can see that in the past a number of teams have gained extra top speed from that - that’s been tightened up a certain amount by regulation changes in the last year or so or more stringent application of certain stiffness tests. I think we probably still need to see a change in the regulation there to see that that geometry has to remain constant all the way across the speed, and one way to do that is to make sure that the physical arrangement of what the rear wing is like is consistent with not being able to change that gap.

Malaysia F1 like sex in a sauna

According to David Coulthard

David Coulthard lived up to his reputation as one of a dying breed of playboy racing drivers in Malaysia today when he compared driving in the sultry heat of Malaysia to having sex in a sauna. Asked during a routine pre-race news conference at the Sepang circuit about how it felt to drive a Formula One car in high humidity and temperatures of more than 33 degrees Celsius, the Scot gave a typically succinct reply. "It's like having to do some physical exercise in a sauna, effectively, and unless it was having sex, I cannot imagine why anyone would want to do anything in a sauna," said Coulthard.When the conference moderator interjected, saying that he always "brought it down to that" Coulthard, who has had a series of model girlfriends. "We're all here because of that aren't we - so I think it is a natural action between, normally a man and a lady, but sometimes."As laughter spread, the moderator interjected again. "Stop there". Are there any other analogies that anyone else can give us?" he said, and the interview swerved off course into more traditional and serious motor racing territory. The Malaysian Grand Prix, the hottest venue and most humid on the annual calendar of 19 races, drains drivers, spectators and all involved of energy.

"It is very tough because, even on the straights, it is difficult to breathe and because it is so humid here," said Jenson Button who has also had a playboy reputation during the earlier stages of his career. He is now concentrating on winning his first Grand Prix. "When you are trying to get some proper air into your lungs," he added, "it is difficult. It is really, really hot air."Ralf Schumacher was more interested in responding by talking about his car's performance. "It really depends. There are years when I have had a difficult car to race here and it was tough," the Toyota driver said. "There were other years when it was totally easy and so it depends on the whole package. If you have a nice running car then it is not a real problem. But if you have a lot of work to do in the car, then it is a problem usually."Jacques Villeneuve raised the debate to a higher level by warning of the dire consequences for drivers if, or when, they dehydrated in the stifling and debilitating conditions. "The thing is that you sweat a lot here which means that you get dehydrated so, in the second half of the race, you start losing a lot of your capacities because of that," he explained. He said he carried half a litre of fluid in the car for the race and the drivers all agreed that it was essential.

When it was mentioned that Fernando Alonso won last year's Malaysian Grand Prix despite the failure of his drinks supply, Button responded. "I know he won the race, but he didn't look too good did he after the race? You definitely need liquids in the race and before the race, too," he said. "I normally drink about five litres in the morning before the race. It makes a massive difference. I didn't have a drink here a couple of years ago and I was so dehydrated that I was shivering and getting cold in the car and then you start to lose your eyesight. It is much better to be hydrated."The last word on the subject, like the first, went to Coulthard. "Any of the physios should be able to give you figures on what the percentage drop-off in a human is once you start to lose a certain amount of body fluid," he explained. "You definitely lose performance. You are not going to be as sharp in your reactions, your mental capabilities drop off as your body dehydrates. And you just cannot battle against that.""You just get on with it because you are focussed, but in any circumstance in normal life you would be admitted to hospital with severe dehydration. And you know we just get a cold towel and a glass of water and you guys think 'ah, you don't do anything for your money!' No-one argued. Coulthard had enjoyed having the first laugh and the last on the subject.

Post race press conference from Bahrain

A close race between Fernando Alonso and Michael Schumacher saw the Renault driver take top honours today in Bahrain while Kimi Raikkonen battled his way from last on the grid to finish third. Here’s what the top three had to say after the first race of the season.

Q: Fernando, it was close all the way, but a great start, you got up to second place on the first lap.
Fernando ALONSO: Yes, the start was good and from there it was a little bit easy to think about the race but about the start maybe was two down on the first lap and then impossible to recover. In the first stint, Michael was too quick, nothing to do. We thought that we had more fuel than the others, especially yesterday in qualifying, up until lap 20 and then from there the car was performing well. We were on a similar pace to Michael and in the second stop, thanks to luck, thanks to the mechanics who did a perfect stop again, I was very close but in front of Michael and from there, I think we had a similar pace again but with me just in front.
Q: It looked to be a bit of a tense time for you going into that second stop when you knew you had to make up time and you were in traffic there. FA: Yeah, a lot of traffic and I think all the guys were OK to let me past but there were no blue flags at all, so the marshals were not in the race at that moment, but I was lucky enough to be in front of Michael and it was good, it was really nice and a really fun race for me.

Q: How did you drive that last stint with Michael behind you?
FA: At the beginning quite slowly, quite conservatively, because I knew that at the beginning maybe the Michelin tyres were a little bit better and at the end maybe the Bridgestone tyres would be better. So I knew that at the end, the last four or five laps, we would have some problems with Michael, for sure, so I was a little bit conservative and I really conserved the tyres to the end, but at the end, I also had quite a nice gap – one second, one second and a half – and all the last stint was quite relaxed.
Q: Michael, for a while Felipe was second on that first lap but by the end it was Fernando in your mirrors. Michael SCHUMACHER: Yes, but quite honestly if you think where we were last year, if you see what has happened over the winter time, if somebody would have told us we would finish second in this race we would have been absolutely happy about it and we are honestly happy. It’s eight points, just two down (from the maximum). Victory is certainly always nicer, no doubt. We got pole position yesterday, unfortunately I lost one lap in qualifying where, for traffic reasons I had to back off and I didn’t get the fuel, and if you look at it now, it’s the one lap that I was missing, in a way. Nevertheless, good result, good work from the team, reliable car, fast car, very promising for the rest of the season and good fighting and good racing.

Q: Brilliant second stint from you, a lot of fuel in the car, a long run there and Fernando behind you the whole way. MS: Yeah. Obviously he was a bit quicker in certain moments. Then I seemed to be able to just open up a little bit and got traffic, close to my pit stop, but nevertheless, you shouldn’t complain. It just goes around one or the other way and it was a good race at the end of the day. I feel a bit sorry for Felipe that he couldn’t take the result of his race but there are many races to go for him.

Q: And how was that phase for you, following Fernando?
MS: You know what it is in Formula One, sitting behind a car, you need to be a lot quicker. When you have equal cars, it’s almost impossible to pass. Once there was a moment with a backmarker, I got a bit closer, I was having a look whether there was an opportunity but then finally it wasn’t close enough to seriously try.

Q: Kimi, from the back of the grid, what a sensational drive from you on a one stop strategy. Talk us through the early phase; you picked up a lot of places very quickly. Kimi RÄIKKÖNEN: Yeah, I think it was a bit disappointing what happened yesterday because the car has been pretty good all weekend and we got a good set-up, especially yesterday morning so starting from the last place, we knew that we had a good chance to score some points, but it really depends on the first few laps and whatever happens during the race but I got quite a few places in the first corner and I was able to follow and overtake people who were lighter, so I got past them during the first stint. We ran quite a bit longer than anyone else so we were able to gain some places and in the end, the Honda came behind me, Jenson, and it was a little bit difficult because I had quite old tyres already which had done many laps, and he was behind me with brand new tyres, so I needed to look out for him and I was able to keep him behind for five laps and then I knew that his new tyres weren’t going to be as good any more so I was able to take it easy and then come home in third place.

Q: But you must feel encouraged by the tremendous speed from you and the car.
KR: Yeah, because we didn’t really know where we were after testing and people said we weren’t very good, but during the last month we really improved our position and when we came here the car was pretty good so it wasn’t surprising, but we didn’t really know where we were. So it was nice to see that we were strong in the race and we could have been very strong in qualifying also.

Q: It looks like it’s going to be a very very close season, Fernando.
FA: Yeah, it will be very interesting. There are four teams fighting for victories at any circuit at the moment: Honda, McLaren, Ferrari and Renault, and I think any of them can win races, and this would make the start of the season, especially, very very interesting.

Q: Fernando, how did you get past Felipe?
FA: Felipe went a little bit long into turn one at the start of the race. I tried to overtake him at turn four, on the next straight but it wasn’t possible, but he braked on the inside line where it was dirty and he missed turn four, so it was there that I overtook him. On the fifth or sixth lap, he overtook me but only for a tenth of a second, because he passed really quickly and dangerously and at that moment I was lucky enough not to touch.

Q: Did you see him coming, sideways or backwards?
FA: Yes, but there was nothing I could do, the speed was too quick and you have no reaction time, basically. I was lucky.

Q: Then it was absolutely vital for you to get out the pits ahead of Michael at that last stop.
FA: Yeah, it was the only opportunity to win the race and I was going for it. I really knew that the car was tougher than Michael’s, especially the first ten laps on the tyres. So it was my moment, I knew that if I was in front of him at the exit of the pits, the race was for me. I really pushed with a good in lap and a perfect pit stop from the mechanics and thanks to this I was in front of him, very close, but in front.

Q: Were you getting a lot of instructions on the radio?
FA: No, I was pushing them more for the blue flags, so they had more radio than me, probably.

Q: How much were you surprised by Michael five laps from the end?
FA: No, we had some people in front, and sometimes they slowed me down, and Michael was close to me, and sometimes it was the opposite. They were nice with me and not so nice with Michael and the gap would open again. I was quite sure that the victory was in my hands.

Q: Were you a bit worried during the opening stages when he was pulling away a bit?
FA: No, not really. We thought that the fuel load was significantly different, and it was not the time to push at that stage.

Q: And what’s the new swagger on the podium?
FA: It’s a secret, I’ll tell you later in the season.

Q: Michael, the end of the pit stop was the crucial point, wasn’t it?
MS: Yep. Probably the pictures show how close I was. I was on the outside, I tried, but there was no opportunity.

Q: And obviously later on as well.
MS: Yeah, once you’re behind, you have to wait for a mistake or a bad situation with a backmarker. It didn’t really occur, so I just sat and waited and watched.

Q: But you’re really happy with what was obviously a very close second place.
MS: Yeah, you know in 19 or 18 races, however many it’s going to be, all points are very important and if you lose or gain two points it’s not really so important at this stage. It would have liked to win but then there is only so much you can do for it and this time it was Fernando. As you see, we have four very competitive teams on the grid and it’s a long year.

Q: Did the opening laps go as planned? MS: Basically, yes, it worked out well.
Q: No more or less than the time you would have hoped to have made up?
MS: No, actually, I was quite happy to see a gap opening up and if you consider that we lost a lap of fuel returned in qualifying due to being just a bit above 110 percent anyway, so it shows where we are and how good we probably can be for the rest of the year.

Q: Kimi, you made up eight places on the first lap; do you remember any of them?
KR: Yes, in the first corner I got quite a few around the outside, and then people were really going too quickly into turn four, and they were sliding around and I got a few places there but the car was good, even though we were much heavier than the guys in front of us. The biggest problem was Villeneuve, he was the most difficult guy to overtake because I was hitting the rev limiter in seventh gear in a straight line so whenever I got close I was not able to pass him. But then finally I got close enough and got him under braking so that was very good. But the car has been good all weekend really so it was a bit disappointing what happened yesterday. But at least we got six points, so we didn’t drop too many points behind the two guys in front of me. There are many races to go and we seem to have good speed and the car is working, so maybe we can see what we can do.

Q: Much pressure from Jenson Button in the closing stages?
KR: Yeah, when he came behind me he was on new tyres and my tyres were a bit old already, so I knew that he could try to overtake me at that point, but I was pushing hard and then after about five laps he started to slow down so I knew then it should be OK barring a mistake, but at that moment when he just had new tyres it was quite close.

1. Fernando Alonso - Renault
2. Michael Schumacher- Ferrari
3. Kimi Raikkonen - Mclaren Mercedes
4. Jenson Button - BAR Honda
5. Juan Pablo Montoya - Mclaren Mercedes
6. Mark Webber - Williams Cosworth
7. Nico Rosberg - Williams Cosworth
8. Cristian Klien -RedBull Ferrari

Bahrain qualifying press conference – Part II

Michael Schumacher starts from Pole Position ahead of new team-mate Felipe Massa while Jenson Button starts third for Honda. The fastest three qualifiers take questions from the media in Bahrain.
Q: (Mathias Brunner - Motorsport Aktuell) Michael, last year you were very critical of qualifying - saying we changed the system far too many times. Would you say this is the right system to keep?

MS: I don’t think it matters what I think in this respect because it matters what the fans think and you write about it. It looks like after all the changes we have made we have something which is exciting and I hope everybody likes it. For us, we can deal with it and it makes it even exciting for us and gives you more opportunities and is very fair if you have changing weather conditions and so on. In a way I think it’s pretty good...
More Formula 1 Online News

Bahrain qualifying press conference - Part I

With Schumacher, Massa and Button It’s an all Ferrari front row for the first race of the season in Bahrain with Michael Schumacher taking his first Pole since Hungary last year and in the process equalling Ayrton Senna’s record of 65 Pole Positions. Felipe Massa starts a fine second in his first race for Ferrari while Jenson Button starts third for Honda. Here’s what the fastest three qualifiers had to say.

Q: Welcome back Michael, your first pole since Hungary ’05.
Michael SCHUMACHER: Yeah, I’ve had to wait a long time to get back up here. Hard work in the meantime, an amazing result. All winter we knew that we seemed to have a good package but then you wait, very strongly for the final confirmation and here and now we have the confirmation for all the hard work. Every engineer, every mechanic has been giving everything to put us back up here and it’s the best way to pay back all our guys. There’s such a great feeling and emotion. It’s been too long ago, too long time ago.

Q: And a bit of a race there with your team mate, 31.5s and then a 31.4s for the pole. MS: Yeah, absolutely. It was very obvious right from the beginning and even before: Ferrari - not without reason - took the decision to take Felipe on board. We knew about his qualities and today he has proven them. It’s a great combination. We’re getting on very well, very focused and I hope the success story will continue after a year’s break.

Q: There was non-stop action from the outside; what was it like from your point of view? Sixth in the first two periods and then pole in the third. MS: Yeah, it has been very exciting, particularly in the first session as we wanted to leave it towards the end, then we had the red flag and we just got in the one lap in which it would have been very easy to make a mistake. From hero to zero wasn’t very much at that moment. The second session was a little bit more straightforward: just be safe and play to stay in the top ten and then we had a good concept and a way to arrange ourselves to go for pole position. The team has worked very well. We have had some struggles over the winter, we couldn’t do the whole programme that we sometimes wanted to do, but nevertheless we came here very focused, very concentrated and very organised.

Q: Felipe, turning to you, not only on the front row but the first time that you’ve ever qualified in the top three as well. Felipe MASSA: Yeah, I’m really happy for that. I would say I’m very happy to be with the Ferrari team and feel comfortable here. It’s amazing how the team works and I knew from the first test I did that it was going to be a much more competitive year for me, to show what I can do and it was definitely a great start. I was really happy to be in the top two in the first race of the season. As for my lap, I’m really happy to be second, but honestly, I have to thank Giancarlo (Fisichella) because he took away my pole position, because I was going to improve my lap time on the last run and I hit traffic, but anyway, great start. Hopefully we can always do this kind of qualifying and I think it’s a great start for me, for everybody in the team.

Q: Jenson, you’ve been looking strong all winter and strong now: P3. Jenson BUTTON: Yeah, it’s quite interesting, the new qualifying system. I’m sure for the spectators and it is for us. It’s always go, you’re always doing something and it turned out reasonably well for us. It’s quite difficult to get clean runs, especially in the last session which I think we all struggled to do a little bit, but I think that our strategy was very good in doing two sets of new tyres and yeah, it’s good to be in the top three and hopefully we can improve on this tomorrow.

Q: What were the conditions actually like in that traffic period at the end, and also given the wind conditions today? JB: It was pretty difficult out there today with the wind. It’s coming from a completely different direction from yesterday. There’s a lot of sand on the circuit, so it’s very difficult to be consistent and when you’re trying to do a fast lap on the edge, it’s tough. But that’s what it’s all about, and it’s great to be third. It’s been a tough winter, very very long but very good for us and I think we will show that tomorrow.

Q: Michael, obviously a different format for the race tomorrow, tyre changing coming back into Formula One. Your thoughts on that? MS: I think it makes racing a little bit more interesting. You drive more on the edge, you push harder, you fight, you overtake, you take a little bit more risk so it’s a good thing.

Q: Michael, a busy hour - or just over - did the strategies work out pretty much as you expected? MS: Obviously nobody could have expected the red flag in the first session and the session to be stopped. Except for that, I guess it was pretty normal. Q: Nothing’s normal at the moment, it’s all pretty much up in the air, isn’t it? MS: I’m pretty sure that the guys on TV who have to commentate on all this and explain it to the fans have had a hard job.

Q: Do you think we are going to see you do two stops for tyres in every race?
MS: We will certainly stop more than we have been doing last year, no doubt! (Laughter)

Q: I meant in qualifying…MS: That depends very much on the strategy you think you need to apply to your own needs, honestly. We chose that strategy.
Q: Of course, the question is how many sets of tyres have you got left now?
MS: Enough!

Q: Your pole position total is now equal to the record. Do you have a comment to make on that? MS: It makes me proud, that’s probably all I should and can say about it.

Q: Felipe was very very close in that qualifying…

MS: Yep, I think that’s the reason why Ferrari took him because we knew he’s performing very very well and he will give fresh air to the team. As I’ve mentioned several times, I never expected him to be anywhere else than where he has shown himself to be. As I’ve said before, he had the possibility to go quicker but for traffic, and it’s always a question of who can do what or whatever. Nevertheless, it’s going to be a tight and nice race between us and pushing each other to good results.

Q: You weren’t allowed to change the car very much, only the front wing and tyre pressures. Would you have liked to have made changes?
MS: Being here, we knew pretty much what to expect and what to do so it certainly helped in this respect to know exactly what to do and not to move around other bits and pieces.

Q: Felipe, well done, it must be a really nice feeling…
FM: It’s a great feeling, fantastic feeling, fantastic opportunity to go to Ferrari and I think the team did a fantastic job in the winter tests to develop the car. We’ve had some issues with the car, but we saw straight away that the car was good and was quick and was performing a lot better than they were used to last year. So for me, it was a great opportunity. I think it is the best way to start the championship, not just starting in second place but also fighting. The pole position thing was really really good for me, and I have to say that I’m really happy and hopefully we can see each other many times.

Q: And so close to Michael as well.
FM: Yeah, it was a great fight, I have to say, and on the last run, I had a little bit of traffic from Giancarlo and anyway it was a great fight and hopefully we can have this fight all the time. Q: What about the track conditions, the wind as well? FM: Well, the track conditions were not easy, there was a really strong wind and it was not so easy to find the right balance so it was very very difficult and in a couple of corners you had understeer, and in other corners you had a lot of oversteer so it was very difficult to drive, but fortunately we didn’t make a mistake and we just made a good lap.

Q: Jenson, obviously happy to be in the top three, but disappointed not to be on the front row? JB: Yeah, I think that’s the same for everyone who isn’t on the front row. We all want to be on the front row and spearheading the grid tomorrow afternoon. But third place was good. I’m reasonably happy with that and it was good, I thought it was very exciting. I’m sure it was the same for all the fans out there watching, because it was non-stop for me. I was in and out of the garage, especially with Räikkönen’s problem in the first session. It made it a very busy session, but it was good fun and it’s nice to be up here in third position and it’s just the normal thing which is the same for everyone: if the traffic is an issue, and it always has been with this sort of system but that’s something we’ve got to sort out ourselves.

Q: But it’s good to have the traffic back again!
JB: Yeah, I think so. It’s great having runs and having to do them at certain times during the hour. I think that does make it extra exciting and we have to be out on the circuit to do the times and I think that’s great, it’s good for the fans and I’m sure it’s going to make for some upsets this season and for some very different grids, I think.

Q: Interesting to see that amongst the three of you, you’re from two teams that tested here before. Do you think that was significant?
JB: It might be. We have the experience on the tyres here and all the other teams don’t. I think these two (Schumacher and Massa) probably had the best experience; they were here for nine days but also the weather was very up and down while we were here and it seems to be very different here for the race. It’s very windy and there was a lot of sand on the circuit which makes it difficult to drive and I think that adds a little bit of excitement to it as well, trying to keep the car in a straight line on the straight. But yes, it’s great that we’ve got a good position here for tomorrow and hopefully we can gain those two positions tomorrow.

Q: Would you like to have changed more in qualifying?
JB: No, not really. I think we had a good balance and in these conditions it’s difficult because in some places, you’ve got quite a bit of understeer, in some places you’ve got quite a bit of oversteer. It matters which direction the wind is. I think we pretty much got the maximum out of the car, it was just getting the maximum out of the circuit, more than anything else.

Formula1 | F1 News 2006

Formula1 F1 News 2006

Ferrari examine the 2006 rules
'New rules will improve the show'The 2006 Formula One World Championship gets underway this weekend in Bahrain, with the Sakhir circuit having the honour of hosting the opening round, as the city of Melbourne is busy with the Commonwealth Games. This is the third year that Bahrain has hosted a Grand Prix, so the track itself should hold few surprises for the teams, especially as Scuderia Ferrari conducted a long test session here in February.However,
the Prancing Horse and the ten other teams will all be facing the challenges of changes to the technical and sporting regulations. As usual, these have been introduced by the FIA with the aim of reducing costs, reducing speeds on safety grounds and improving the show for the public.

Button buys Bahrain abode

A new home in the Durrat Al Bahrain developmentEnglish F1 driver Jenson Button has reportedly bought a plush property in Bahrain.Ahead of Sunday's grand prix on the Gulf island, the Honda star visited the $3bn 'Durrat Al Bahrain' development on Wednesday, according to Gulf Daily News newspaper.Located on the south eastern coast of the island, ...

Schumacher predicts end of Alonso and Raikkonen dominance

More than three championship favourites Ferrari star Michael Schumacher predicted Thursday that Fernando Alonso and Kimi Raikkonen would not repeat last year's dominance in the fight for the drivers' title.The seven-time World Champion, 37, instead insisted that he would figure in the final reckoning and said he also thought at least three other drivers could challenge for honours...

Vodafone's F1 bigwig fired

A marketing review at VodafoneVodafone has fired the man responsible for Formula One sponsorship at Ferrari (2006) and McLaren (2007). According to the Guardian newspaper, Marketing Director Peter Bamford was ousted in the midst of a power struggle between the company's Chief Executive and Chairman.

Sunday, March 12 2006, Formula 1 season will be opened on Bahrain, at Sakhir GP circuit.
Until then I invite you to see some pictures from tests and preparations.

You can also obtain official informations from Formula1.com website.