Category: India In F1

TEAM REPRESENTATIVES – Paul HEMBERY (Pirelli), Cyril ABITEBOUL (Renault Sport F1), Franz TOST (Toro Rosso), Robert FERNLEY (Force India) Toto WOLFF (Mercedes), Christian HORNER (Red Bull Racing)

PRESS CONFERENCE

Let’s start with a general question to all of you. What did you think of what came out of last week’s F1 Strategy Group, some of the proposals that have been put forward for 2017 and if we could start, perhaps, with Christian?

Christian HORNER: Well, as you know, we’re not supposed to talk about the content of these meetings and referring to the press release it was a very positive meeting and lots of good things talked about for 2017. There was obviously a large amount of discussion about the future and about current issues. I think there is positive work going on regarding the 2017 chassis. There were debates about refueling, whether that should be reintroduced or not. Differing opinions on that. It was a constructive meeting. I wouldn’t say that we nailed down a whole load of decisions out of it, but certainly a lot of discussion about the relevant topics at this point in time.

Toto?

Toto WOLFF: There’s not a lot to add to what Christian said. It was a good meeting in relation to the 2017 regs. We all agree that we want to reintroduce quicker cars, get the lap times down by five to six seconds. Make it more of a driver formula, maybe get rid of the electronic start procedures, go back to more conventional clutches. Refuelling was discussed, with many various opinions. But we all agreed that this is what should be happening, so it was good.

Robert?

Robert FERNLEY: I must have been at a different meeting. I don’t think it was a good meeting at all. After 18 months I think we failed totally to agree on any form of cost control. There’s absolutely no way there is going to be any equitable distribution of income. Power units are going to remain the same. And whilst I agree that there were some good discussions on 2017, the fundamentals of Formula One weren’t addressed at all.

Paul?

Paul HEMBERY: Yeah, I guess there were a couple of points that came out that relate to tyres. One was regarding the choice of compounds made by the teams and we’re working in that regard with Charlie [Whiting] and the FIA to come up with a proposal that meets that requirements, that gives us a level of safety in the choices made and also to provide something interesting for the fans. That’s ongoing but it looks positive, what we’ve seen so far. Then 2017, obviously we don’t know whether we will be here or not but the idea of going to wider, 420 width tyres, was something we feel is a good idea.

Franz?

Franz TOST: I wasn’t involved in the meeting; therefore it’s difficult to evaluate the contents. What I miss is the discussion how we can come down with the costs and how we will find a way to create an interesting – apart from the technical side for the future – but we will see then the 2017 regulation is being discussed and then we will see what will come the result.

And Cyril, what did you glean from it about 2017?

Cyril ABITEBOUL: Well, 2017 seems a bit far away. But we’ll get back to that a bit later. I think it was an interesting meeting, as always. Formula One is a very sophisticated and complex environment, so it’s very difficult to agree on one single set of measures that can address the issues. I think to a certain degree everyone agrees on what has to be done, what has to be delivered by Formula One in the future. So I think it’s good that we share a vision. It’s very much how we get from where we are today to that vision that is now the topic for discussion.

OK, I’m sure that others will come back this point later in the session, but let’s just move on to individual questions. Franz if we could start with you. Obviously today the running was a bit truncated by the weather but in the first session and the beginning of the second, it looked like your two drivers, Verstappen and Sainz, were up to speed very quickly, with Verstappen setting the second fastest time this morning. How impressed were you with what they did?

FT: I think we have the ingredients together that both cars have to be in qualifying three and we have to finish in the points. We have a good car, a competitive car. Both drivers do a very good job. The team is also improving. Therefore I don’t see why we should not score a lot of points, so I’m quite optimistic.

Well, the car obviously looked good in Spain as well. Is the car more consistent? Because that is certainly is something you needed coming from last year, right?

FT: The car is more consistent. The car is more controllable, especially under braking and in acceleration. The car is easier to drive as was the case in the years before and as a result of this of course the drivers have a good chance to get the most out of the car without making any mistakes.

Paul, coming to you, we didn’t get the chance to see the revised supersoft tyres today, they stayed in their blankets in the second half of FP2. Obviously they are going to be run at the next few races. A bit frustrated by that and how do you expect it go here over the next couple of days?

PH: Well, it was probably more frustration for the teams. The only thing we gained was the resurfacing. It doesn’t seem to have changed very much. It’s a very low-impact circuit from our point of view, so we don’t envisage any issues.

Going back to the meeting last week. One of the things that was proposed was that the teams should be able to tell you which two tyre compounds they want you to bring for them for grand prix weekends. How do you feel about that suggestion and also the whole notion of making the cars, as Toto said, five to six seconds a lap faster?

PH: Well, it touches on what I’ve already mentioned that we’ve taken on board those comments and we’re working on a solution with the FIA that meets that requirement but also guarantees that we have a level of security over the choices made but also giving the sport itself some interesting elements. So, we’re confident and I think from initial discussions we’re on a good road to finding a solution for that. Going quicker? It depends on how you achieve that. Wider tyres would certainly help that. From a tyremakers point of view you’d want to know how you can contest that. We have limitations on testing today and if the cars are going to change dramatically you wouldn’t really want to end up in Jerez in February, in the winter trying to find out if it’s going to be workable solution or not. The principal is fine, there needs to be a little bit of work I’m sure done on the practicalities.

Thank you. Robert, you were one of the ones proposing this free tyre choice idea, what do you like about the concept?

RF: I like the fact that it brings the decision-making down to the teams and I think it will bring variability in terms of the racing tactics of what goes on and I’m really pleased that Pirelli have embraced the idea and are coming up with a solution that will give them the safety as well as the team a little bit more choice.

On a Force India-specific note, what’s the latest on your revised 2015 package? What’s the forecast on when it’s going to be out and the latest forecast on the performance gain it’s going to give you?

RF: Well, they’re encouraged by performance gain, I think that’s [what] I’m getting through from the engineers. Hopefully it’s still on target for us for Austria. I would like to think we could do it for the race but it’s most likely going to be the test.

Cyril, coming to you and going back to the Strategy Group meeting, one of the things that was voted was not to have a fifth engine this season, what’s your reaction to that?

CA: Obviously I regret it, because that’s something that would have facilitated a bit the situation of our two customer teams given the different reliability issues we’ve had so far this season. Having said that, we knew the rules, it’s four engines for everyone, so that’s what we have to comply with. The only comment I would make is that we don’t that as something that is a huge penalty. I know there is a lot of frustration but ten places penalty – maybe I should not say that because maybe the FIA will make it worse in the future – but ten places penalty in tracks when you can overtake, assuming you have the power, the right set-up and so on, basically a car that out of place at the start can quite easily make it during the race, which are long races. So, I’m sorry for my customer teams but I don’t think it’s a big game changer to the championship.

Monaco is always an important race for Renault on a number of levels, what sort of shape are you in this weekend?

CA: Honestly, we want an easy weekend. We want a trouble-free weekend. I’m not going to say that we have more power, more performance because it would be an unfair misrepresentation. Right now what we want to have under control is the particular reliability crisis that we suffered for the start of the season and then be back to resume the performance plan that we had on the shelf for the remainder of the season.

Toto, obviously Nico got some momentum into his championship with the win in Spain last time out. Lewis Hamilton said he’s very keen to take pole and win here after two years of being on the wrong side of things from Nico. How does the rivalry look from inside the team? How’s this heading towards Saturday’s final runs in Q3 and the race on Sunday?

TW: The rivalry has always been intense on track and we’ve seen it from the start of the day. They were both out there in anger, pretty competitive lap times straight from the beginning. And it’s good for the team because it pushes the team, it pushes the two to new levels, competing against each other, so for Thursday, we can be pretty satisfied.

Obviously the news this weekend is the new contract with Lewis Hamilton. Why did you chose to declare… to announce that it is a three year term and are the values that are circulating around in the media vaguely accurate as to the value of the contract?

TW: You know the discussions around the contract have been out there for quite a while. We had the terms already a couple of weeks ago and declaring that it was a three year term seemed reasonable to us, in order to show that it’s a long term relationship and stability is important for us. On the figures out there, I can’t really comment. The only thing I can say is that there have been lots of nonsense out there as well.

Christian, congratulations first of all on your marriage. Here in Monaco, Daniel Ricciardo has said that this weekend should see Red Bull Racing’s best result of the season. Do you share his optimism?

CH: Well, first of all thank you, I’m technically on honeymoon with all of you! Daniel Ricciardo, he’s always excelled at this circuit, always in the lower categories as well. Of course the power unit plays a smaller role at this circuit of all the circuits that we go to in the year, so hopefully, as Cyril’s pointed out, if we can have a reliable troublefree weekend… already in free practice, both drivers have fared pretty decently so far.

There’s been some pressure from your director, Dr Marko, on Daniil Kvyat recently. What’s your view on what Kvyat’s done so far and what he needs to do?

CH: I think… Helmut’s comments… I’ll come back to that in a minute. He’s always called things as they are and I think that Daniil Kvyat’s had a tough run so far. Things haven’t gone cleanly on his side of the garage, he’s had some good races and he’s had some times that he’s struggled with. But he’s young, he’s developing all the time. We can see a great deal of potential in him, you can see it even in that last wet run at the end of P2. He’s going to mature and develop. Helmut’s always had a habit of calling things as they are. I recall going back to Mark Webber’s time… After this race in 2010 we went to Turkey. As we know, Mark and Helmut didn’t always see eye to eye and they (Mark and Sebastian) had that crash in Turkey. We ended up back in my office and it was an opportunity, I said to Mark, to get everything out, address your issues with Helmut. And I said to Helmut before the meeting, whatever he says, take it on the chin and agree. And so Mark went through all the issues that he had, told him what had pissed him off about Helmut, blah, blah blah, and Helmut took it on board and said ‘yes, OK, I agree, OK’ and then he said ‘anyway, the next race in Valencia is very important to us and you’ve always been shit in Valencia!’ And Mark, thankfully, saw the funny side but it explains some of the straight talking that Helmut tends to have.

QUESTIONS FROM THE FLOOR

Q: (Louis Dekker – NOS) Question for Mr Tost, Mr Horner and Mr Wolff. How do you rate P2 this morning by a driver who never drove here before? How should we evaluate it?

CH: I thought it was super. For a guy that can’t rent a hire car yet, I mean it’s enormously impressive. 17 years of age… I think the two Toro Rosso drivers actually have done a wonderful job this year and, you know, I think it’s one of the positive stories in Formula One at the moment is those two young rookies that Red Bull have given a chance. They’re here on merit and it shows that the junior programme is most definitely working.

And Toto? You were in a bit of a tug-of-love with Red Bull over his services. Are you beginning to regret you missed out?

TW: No, I think it was clear that what Vestappen was offered was a deal he had to go for. You can see that, in the right car, with the right team-mate, they push each other. It’s two of the best boys, young boys, out there. And clearly for Max, finishing P2 on a track he has never been to, in these conditions, is good – but as Christian said, I wouldn’t underestimate Carlos’ performances either. I think it shows, if you have two team-mates who compete on a similar level, they push each other and the rivalry is very good – but obviously Franz will know much more about it.

Franz, do you want to add a bit more?

FT: Yeah, we all know that Max is very, very high-skilled driver, therefore Red Bull took him into the programme and bought him into Toro Rosso, and what I was impressed, how he achieved this really, really good time in P1. He went out in the morning and from run to run he improved his lap time without making any mistake. No locking, nothing. His car control and his feedback during the run was really, really extraordinary. I’m really, really happy he is in the team and I’m convinced he will show some other great runs – hopefully in qualifying, because this counts – and also in the race. I think that we will have some success with him also this year – and I wouldn’t be surprised to see him – earlier or later – within the first five.

Q: (Pierre Van Vliet – F1i Magazine) Question for Cyril. What is the deadline for Renault to decide about its future in Formula One, knowing that your current contract runs to the end of 2016, if I’m right?

CA: Yeah, we have contracts that run with those two gentlemen until the end of 2016. I guess the deadline is 31^st December 2016. No, joke apart. We have no deadline, no rush. I think right now the deadline and the big target is to get engine under control, both from reliability and performance perspectives. Once this is done we can secure some longer-term stuff. And I’m sure right now this is a concern for our customer – will we be capable of dealing with the regulation, with dealing with the trouble that we have right now? So, I think this is a concern for them, this is a concern also for us, so this is what we have to address in priority before thinking about anything else.

Q: (Dieter Rencken – Racing Lines) Christian, I’d like to come back to something you said, and also something you said Toto, namely that you can’t really discuss the Strategy Group and you can’t really talk about things. Autosport and F1 Racing have just started a fan survey, they’ve had 25,000 responses in 24 hours – which tells me that there’s an awful lot of fans out there that actually want to be heard. Yet, this 21^st Century sport with 500million followers is actually living up to 15^th Century Masonic Society levels of secrecy. Is this really the way to go forward?

Toto, do you want to start?

CH: Are you in the Masons?

TW: What are the Masons?

CH: I couldn’t tell you that…

TW:  You know, whatever we discuss in the Strategy Group, bizarrely ends up in the media ten minutes later – or even earlier – during the discussions. Sometimes we need to make up our mind in there and discuss. We don’t have always the same opinion but it’s a matter of pushing the sport forward. And for the sake of the sport. And whatever solutions we come up with, it’s all shit. We are discussing making the cars faster, five or six seconds, wider tyres, more spectacular cars, more g-forces, the things we have mentioned before and the topic of refuelling. The only thing I can read after the meeting is that refuelling doesn’t make any sense. Interestingly, you asked the drivers yesterday on the very same podium and they all love it. So I think we must stop talking the sport down. I’ve mentioned that a couple of times in here. And one of the rules we have established – and Bob is new to the group so maybe we have to reemphasise this is that we shouldn’t talk the sport down. We should push the sport up. We need all of you, plus us, to re-emphasise on the good points, on the attractive bits of the sport and try to make it better. It’s not always an easy exercise.

Robert?

RF: Well, to a certain degree I agree with Toto. I think that the problem I have is that I don’t think the Strategy Group is fit for purpose and we should be looking at something where we have a clear programme that delivers results. We’ve have 18 months or two years of Strategy Group work with nothing coming out of it. I think we need to look at the system in a better way. In days gone by, with Max and Bernie in charge, there would be none of that. We would know exactly where we’re going. I don’t think you should have the teams making decisions on where Formula One should go. The teams should be told where Formula One is going.

OK. Maybe offer that one to you Christian – because you did say, didn’t you, at one point before the meeting that it should be taken out of the teams?

CH: Well yeah. I mean it’s rather predictable. Bob’s going to ask for more money, Toto’s going to not want to change anything and we want to change engines. So every team has got its own agenda and it’s going to fight its own corner. I think that the sport is governed by the FIA and it’s promoted by FOM. It’s those guys that need to get together and say ‘what do we want Formula One to be?’ Yes, we want it to go quicker, we want cars to be more aggressive to drive – but you’re never going to keep everybody happy. I think that Bernie and Jean need to get together and say “this is what we want the product to be, this is how it needs to be governed,” and then give us the entry form and see if we want to enter or not. Because I think putting it in the team’s environment to try and agree a set of regulations – you’re never going to get everybody on the same piece of paper.

Cyril, you were nodding…

CA: I think it’s right – except the bit on the engine – I fully agree with what Christian just said, obviously. I think it needs a very strong leadership with a very small group of people. I have to say that I was invited to that Strategy Group and I obviously enjoyed that for Renault because Renault is spending a lot of money in the sport. I mean we were as an observer. But one thing that struck me is that there is actually lot of people in this Strategy Group. One comment about the transparency – I don’t think this type of meeting would be broadcasted or communicated on in other sports, so I don’t think that we are that old-fashioned in that respect. And again, also people underestimate the complexity of Formula One and the knock-on effect of every single thing that you change. The things that you are doing something for one positive and actually the knock-on effects are huge. And sometimes I think it’s good that you trust us and Formula One Management in general, that we are doing the right things in general. We are in the same boat, we should not criticise each other.

Franz – do you have anything to add to this?

FT: Well, first of all I think the contents of a strategy meeting discussion should not be immediately published because it’s just a discussion. It’s not that anything has been decided so far and once a decision has been made, of course this has to be announced and therefore it’s not necessary to write and talk about everything what is being taken into consideration. I think that the Strategy Group itself, as Christian mentioned before, with this constellation, never will come up with a proper solution. It should be Bernie and Jean together, they should decide what we have to do. They even should not ask the teams because the teams never will come up with an agreement.

And final word on this from Paul.

PH: I think Christian and Franz put that very well. That in any sport it shouldn’t be the competitors that are involved in deciding changes. As Christian said, defining between the FIA and FOM how the sport is going to be, and then the teams can decide whether they want to adhere to those guidelines. So, I’m fully with the two points made by Franz and Christian.

Q: (Jerome Pugmire – AP) Question for Franz. You seem to be… obviously you know all about Max’s potential but he even seemed to surprise you today with his drive. You say he could finish top five before the end of the season. How long to you think is realistic before he’s challenging for a podium?

FT: Depends how many cars not finishing in front of us. The smaller, the better the chance he will be on the podium. We must be realistic. There are teams and cars in front of us. They have double of the budget than us. They have fantastic, good competitive package and it’s not easy to compete against them – but nevertheless we have two drivers and, as I have explained before, we have also a car which is quite competitive and once – maybe special whether conditions, maybe it’s raining or whatever – will help us to bring one of the drivers to the podium.

Q: (Ian Parkes – Autosport) Just getting back to the previous question regarding the Strategy Group. Bearing in mind some of the comments that we’ve just heard, is it time now to disband that group because it’s had its day, it’s had its time, it’s had its opportunity and quite clearly it just isn’t working?

RF: Well, I don’t think it every had its day. End of story.

Toto?

TW: You need… this is a professional sport. It’s a global platform. It needs to have a proper governance. And I think if we wish for dictatorship, I can see us sitting here in two years and complaining that it’s going in the wrong direction. It is always tricky to find the right government. You vote for one government, you wish for the other one to rule, and the other way around.

CH: I think it’s difficult. It’s a forum where strategic things are discussed about the future. It’s not a decision-making forum. That should go either up to the Formula One Commission or down to the working groups. I think, you know, it’s difficult. If you pick up on Bob’s comments, then yeah, the only thing the Strategy Group has unanimously agreed on and implemented this year is the fact that the drivers should wear the same crash helmet for the entire season. Is that a success of the group? Not really. Is it a worthwhile forum? I think it is – but I think the structure of how regulations are implemented, that’s what we need to look at. As I say, I think the promoter, he’s promoting the show, he’s got to sell a product and that product’s got to be appealing to the fans. And he needs to be listening  to the 25,000 people writing in. The people around the world: what do they want? What do they want Formula One to be? And then as teams, as competitors, we have to abide by a set of regulations that the FIA should write. Sporting and technical. And at that point you have a choice: whether you want to be in or be out. But every year, the entry form comes out and we all sign on the dotted line.

Franz.

FT: Formula One is entertainment. What the fans want to see: they want to see entertaining races; they want to see overtaking manoeuvres and so on. If, for example, one, two, three cars or whatever are one-and-a-half, two seconds ahead of the rest of the field, this cannot be in the interests neither of the other teams not – and this is more important – of the fans. The fans want to see fights. If this is not the case. If this we cannot deliver, then let me say, the responsible people should sit around the table and say, “look, we have to chance the regulation in this way, that we can improve the show,” or whatever. This doesn’t happen because we are discussing too much and we have too many useless meetings.

Paul – presumably you have data on the number of overtakes now compared to the times when there was refuelling, for example, in the background, that kind of stuff?

PH: Yeah, of course. I think if you talk enough to enough people, you’re just going in circles. That’s always the case in most forms of business. So, there’s a clear need for direction and strategy. Coming from a sponsors point of view, we obviously would like to see what the plans are going forward to grow in markets where our business is important – so in Asia, in the USA, Latin America is always very important, even Russia. We look forward always to understanding the results of these meeting groups to see what impact it could have on the sport and the interests of the sport worldwide. So, as long as the direction of the sport is clear, we’re happy. But clear there is a number of people not so happy clear, we’re happy. But clear there is a number of people not so happy at the moment and they maybe need a change.

Q: (Daniel Johnson – The Telegraph) Christian and Toto, on the subject of surveys, the drivers are launching their own through the GPDA. How do you view that? Do you take it as a sign that the strategy group seems to have not been able to agree much more than helmets not changing? That the drivers feel the need to step in to this space where they haven’t really before, especially not from a GPDA point of view?

CH: Well, I’m not sure that it’s the drivers’ specialist area. The GPDA was essential set up as a safety group, to look at circuit safety, drivers’ safety, drivers’ protection. It’s great that they feel that they want to engage with the fans. I’m sure they’ll be willing to put a lot more time in and get out there and meet them.

TW: I think that Alex was very innovative always and pushing this, and having the idea of a survey is a great thing. It’s going to give us additional input, maybe some interesting findings, that it’s not that easy to actually draw the right conclusions. But the drivers are the essential part of the show so for them to be involved and get engaged is a good thing.

Q: (Joe van Burik – NU. NL) Question for the front row: there was no driving for 60 minutes in the second practice session because of the rain, this while many concerns are voiced about declining viewership and spectator numbers. Isn’t this a strange situation then?

RF: I think it’s very unfortunate from the point of view of all the fans that are here and obviously for the TV companies but it’s also very difficult from a team point of view. There’s a high risk of incident in Monaco and it’s unlikely that we’re going to have any rain on Saturday or Sunday. I think you tend to push the limits a little bit too far sometimes. There’s nothing to learn, particularly, if it’s a dry Saturday and Sunday, in going out in the wet and there’s everything to lose, so while my sympathies are hugely there with the fans and the TV companies to fill the time, there is a reason why that’s done, because the drivers want to be out on every lap that they possibly can be, and as a team we want to be out on every lap so it’s not done in any way to be negative to the show.

TW: Bob said pretty much everything. There is a risk of putting the car in the wall and that makes things complicated for the weekend. The forecast at the moment is much better than what we saw today and it’s Thursday afternoon. Maybe the real impact for spectators and fans starts Saturday.

CH: Well, we’ve only got four engines so if we’ve had a few more engines maybe we’d do a few more laps. No, I think Bob’s point… you have to make a decision. The first thing is ask the spares guy how many spares we’ve got: not many, OK, so we’re not going to do many laps then in conditions like this, particularly as the forecast is hopefully to get better for the rest of the weekend. It’s a tactic towards your Grand Prix weekend unfortunately.

Q: (Sebastian Scott – racedepartment.com) Paul, you don’t know if you’re going to be here in 2017. Would you welcome a tyre war with rival tyre manufacturers or even multiple tyre manufacturers, or would you prefer to offer teams four compounds a race?

PH: Well, we don’t write the rules for Formula One. We’re involved in over 250 championships of which about 90 are open competition, so it depends what the sport wants and then you’ve got to understand the rules, what the cost implications would be so you can’t really have an answer until you know the parameters. At the moment the tender will be for a single supplier so 2017, I might be here or I might be sat on a boat having some champagne and watching it. Probably better to be sat on the boat actually. Yeah, it’s a phase that you go through with various championships so there would be a phase of where the FIA will evaluate the technical competences of people who want to supply and then there’s an aspect that is the important bit which is the commercial aspect with the promoter. So there’s a timetable set out and we will obviously know before the end of the year.

Q: (Dieter Rencken – Racing Lines) Toto, based on the numbers that are going around about Lewis’s stipend for the next three years, by my estimation he will be earning about five times as much as Dieter Zetsche for working ten per cent of the time. Will he really sell fifty times as many cars as your CEO?

TW: Dieter, I can’t even comment on that question. This is a market and in that market you have a value or you don’t. Lewis is one of the best racing drivers out there, maybe the best at the moment and he has a huge value for the brand and fundamentally this is what drives his value and this is a classical win-win situation for the team and for himself.

Q: (Ian Parkes – Autosport) Just following on to the question to Paul earlier about a tyre war; to the four team principals, is that something that would appeal to you, to have a choice of tyre manufacturer? Fernando Alonso spoke very strongly in favour of it, bearing in mind he recalls the Michelin-Bridgestone days of the early 2000s.

FT: I just hope that no tyre war will come, that means no other tyre manufacturer, because this means that two teams will get the good tyres and the rest will just get this crap, because like it was before, when Michelin was in, it was Renault therefore Alonso has good memories and Bridgestone with Ferrari, therefore Michael was so successful, one of the reasons, yeah? If this comes back, it’s the same story: the two tyre manufacturers, two teams which get good tyres; three tyre manufacturers  three teams and the rest just get what the others don’t like. That means the complete competition would drive in a completely different direction. Then we would have, after now the power unit Formula One, we would have the tyre Formula One. Once the power units are stabilised, we open the next problem.

CH: I think Franz summed it up splendidly, that one make tyre is equality for all of the teams. I think that in the times of tyre wars then of course effort does have to go behind your leading charge and it will drive costs up immeasurably as you have to develop your car around a specific tyre so I think it’s been one of the successes in having a sole tyre and I think that that’s one of the reasons for example that Red Bull has been able to achieve the success that it’s been able to achieve as an independent team, which we perhaps would never have been able to enjoy in the event that there was open competition with tyre manufacturers aligned to automotive manufacturers, which is of course is where their core income comes from.

TW: We (Franz and I) are both Austrians therefore we use the same words.

RF: Yeah, I think putting on the positive side of what Formula One has done well and I think the single tyre choice is one of the things that it has done very well and we shouldn’t change.

Q: (Graham Harris – Motorsport Monday) Question for Cyril, Christian and possibly Franz: it’s now pretty obvious you’re not going to get any more than four engines. You’ve openly said that you’re going to expect to take more than four engines; when do you expect to take the first grid penalties? Will it be done strategically? And how will you handle it through the year?

CH: I think it’s inevitable that we’re not going to do the rest of the season on one power unit so hopefully it will do another couple of races and then of course you try and introduce your additional engines strategically – you may not have the choice to do that. But we’ll deal with it as and when it arrives and of course if you replace the whole engine, that’s a different scenario to replacing just the combustion part of the engine for example, so different penalties for different elements of the engine that you have to replace.

CA: Nothing to add, that’s exactly what we unfortunately have to take into account when we elaborate one plan when we elaborate an engine allocation plan. We try to mitigate the damage to our customer teams from a sporting perspective. It will happen, maybe twice per car unfortunately. Now we have to deal with  that just like an extra parameter, just like an extra constraint.

FT: Everything has been explained by Christian and by Cyril. We wait and see how long the different parts are reliable and then we have to go for it anyway. I just hope that it’s not here for Monaco and for Budapest. The rest, I’m quite open.

eom/FIA transcript

TEAM REPRESENTATIVES – Yasuhisa ARAI (Honda), Andrew GREEN (Force India), James KEY (Toro Rosso), Paul MONAGHAN (Red Bull Racing), James ALLISON (Ferrari), Pat SYMONDS (Williams)

PRESS CONFERENCE

If I may start with you Arai-san: How would you characterise the past three months and also how tough has the start of this new F1 adventure for Honda been? 

Yasuhisa ARAI: First of all, it has been very tough, but invigorating. We are always [ready for a] challenge, the challenge being that we are always looking for our progress and [to] succeed, so it has been a very good first three months.

Can you quantify the progress that has been made over the past couple of months and especially since Australia? How much closer are you now to the performance goals you set out for this year?

YA: So, as you know, we did not run so much in the winter tests but as you know we already progressed race by race, step by step. In Australia we ran 56 laps and also in Malaysia the gap was less than two seconds and today there is much progress and I hope that [continues] race by race and step by step for the future.

Moving to you James Allison: how important has the win in Malaysia been for Ferrari, not just in terms of a short-term boost in confidence but also in validating the package and the engineering route you are taking?

James ALLISON: I think the main thing it does… well, it makes everybody happy of course, but the main effect it does have is boosting everyone’s confidence. The team has had a difficult period over the past couple of years and to score a win was tremendously enjoyable and helps pump everyone up and makes it easier to work the hours that they need to work before we can close up and be properly competitive in every race.

And the engineering?

JA: Well, the stopwatch always tells you what you need to know engineering-wise and of course to finish at the front in a race is a great thing but it doesn’t tell you much about what’s going to happen in the future.

Yesterday’s Sebastian said that “for here and for the next races it’s important to know what we want to achieve”. What is the level that Ferrari can achieve? Is fighting for the title something achievable or are you just going back to these two or three wins that Maurizio Arrivabene set at the beginning of the season?

JA: I think that we’re up against a car, in Mercedes, and others too, that are strong competition. But Mercedes in particular, they have a bit more horsepower than us and a bit more downforce than us and until we’ve closed those two gaps it’s not realistic to talk about title challenges. Our objectives were set out at the beginning of the year, we thought it was realistic to score a couple of wins and of course we’ll take whatever comes our way and we’ll do our best to make our car close up as much as we can and who knows what after that during the course of the year, but I think that sticking with the objectives we stated at the beginning of this year is still realistic.

Thank you very much. Coming you Paul: history shows that Red Bulls cars have progressed relative to the competition throughout every specific season. Is what we’re seeing now another example of that or are there deeper problems at the moment?

Paul MONAGHAN: If you look back in the short term, [in the] Australia race we had a few stumbles but one car finished; Malaysia wasn’t our finest hour, we made a couple of small mistakes that cost us dearly. Here we’ll correct those and start to see where we sit in the pecking order. As James has alluded to, we’ve all got a development race to have. The bar is set and we’ve all got to try to reach that bar, so we’ll develop as quickly as we can, work as hard as we can and see where we get to.

What are the major areas the team is focusing on with the chassis at the moment?

PM: The team is focusing on what it perceives as its weakness, you’ll have to ask the others what they perceive as their weaknesses. As James has alluded to, we probably lack a little bit of downforce compared to some of the others, so we’ll chase the aerodynamic performance of the car but how we chase that is our business.

Thank you very much. Moving onto James Key this time. We’ve spoken about Ferrari’s progress this year, but also Toro Rosso has made an impressive start to the season. Is this something that is a specific development, has any particular development allowed that, or is it just a continuation of what we saw last year from Toro Rosso.

James KEY: It’s a mix of both really. We’ve had a kind of three-year plan really of trying to get the team from A to B, and A was where it was a couple of years back, which is not where we wanted it to be, and B is next year I suppose, so we’re in the middle of that process and we’ll have to see how we go, but through that, in the background, we’ve been doing a lot of work in how we go about the design process, building the team up and improving the facilities and so on and I think that probably this car is the first one that has been designed in the way I hoped we could design at STR and develop. Some of that was in last year’s car for sure but not everything. It takes a while to get these things sorted out, so we’re beginning to see a little bit of the fruits of our labours, but it’s not finished yet. We made a good step on the aero side I have to say over the winter, a really good step, the guys did a good job and there’s plenty more to do. So it’s work in progress still I think.

How impressed have you been by the two drivers, the so-called inexperienced [drivers]?

JK: Yeah, you wouldn’t know it, looking at some of what they’ve done actually. They’ve done really well. I think it’s a very exciting driver line-up for us. Again, it shows how much strength there is in the Red Bull programme to have the guys we have in Max and Carlos. They’re both doing a very good job. For Carlos to do two stops… Max was the headline in a way, because he did a lot of the action on the track for us, but for Carlos to do two stops last weekend in those hot conditions was the mark of someone who you wouldn’t think is in their second race. And for Max to do what he did after issues the day before was also extremely good. I think for them their preparation has been good, we gave them as many miles as we could in winter testing and so far we’ve been extremely happy with them.

Q: We’ve heard a lot about the introduction of a ‘B-spec’ car for Austria – what exactly does that mean in comparison to the upgrades you would bring on a race-by-race basis?

Andrew GREEN: Yeah, there’s been a lot of talk about that. In reality, we knew the beginning of the season was going to be quite difficult. It’s well known we moved to a new tunnel testing facility at the beginning of the year and we’re in the process now of re-correlating and understanding where we stand relative to the tunnel testing. In the background there’s an awful lot going on and the guys back at the factory are working very hard at putting together new packages to bring to the circuit. They will come along when they’re ready. There’s a lot of hoops that have to be jumped through and a lot of green lights have to be set for those parts to come to the track. It’s difficult for me to sit here now and say when and what is going to turn up. Those are the sort of decisions that we make internally and we’ll discuss those internally. They’ll turn up when they’re ready. They won’t turn up a day earlier than that.

Q: Alongside an upgrade of major significance, is there also a plan of bringing smaller updates in the interim?

AG: Absolutely. And we’ve done that since we started. There were updates here, there were updates at the last race. That will continue. Our process of learning never stops, so yeah, that’s the normal process that we – and everyone else – goes through.

Q: Coming to you Pat, have the first two races been truly representative of where Williams stands at the moment – or is there a lot more to come?

Pat SYMONDS: I think there’s a fair bit more to come. Obviously in Australia our biggest handicap was only having one car entered because of the problems Valtteri had with his back. Y’know, that takes a big hit in your total points for the year. We’re in a tough competition now, Ferrari have moved on a long way and we wish to fight them – and we will continue to fight them. So, I think that the first two races, they weren’t great for us. That said, we’ve come away from them with half as many points again as we scored in those first two races last year. But if you look historically, over the last five years, to finish second in the championship, you need to be scoring 22.2 points per race. To finish third, you need 18.6 – so we’re a little bit behind the curve at the moment but I hope we can catch up on it.

Q: What are you unhappy with on the car at the moment? Which area needs addressing most urgently?

PS: This is going to sound like a repetitive answer but it’s more downforce. That’s what makes these cars go so quickly. In terms of our power unit, we’re pretty happy with things. I think all the Mercedes customers are – so we need to keep working on the downforce and that will allow us to challenge harder to James and the others.

QUESTIONS FROM THE FLOOR

Q: (Kate Walker – motorsport.com) I’ve got a question for Pat and for James Allison. You’ve both taken over roles that involve taking once front-running teams and restoring them to where they should belong but over the course of your careers the roll of technical director seems to have moved into a sort-of psychological… you have to do psychological man-management, you have to improve morale, change your working culture rather than sit at sketch board with a pencil. How has that role evolved in your experience – and how have you acquired the necessary skills to motivate people rather than design bits of kit?

PS: Well I worked with James and I’ve obviously motivated him far too well because he’s beating me now! You’re right, these are very big racing teams now and when I started in Formula One they were much smaller. You were much more a jack-of-all-trades. You did a lot more hands-on design etcetera. When the teams get up to the size they are now, in our case over 500 people, some others bigger than that, you do have to manage them well: you have to motivate people, you have to organise people. You have to use your budgets wisely; you have to make intelligent decisions as to where you’re going to develop the car. You can’t go in every direction; you can’t hit things with a scattergun approach. So, yeah, I guess I spend more of my day these days in that sort of role than I do in the good, old-fashioned engineering. But I still have a passion for engineering. I attend every design review that we have. I get involved. But, no, it’ll be a long while before you see me on a CAD station, I think.

James?

JA: I’d echo much of what Pat says. I think, although the sport has changed in the direction that Pat suggests, I think it depends a lot on the individual. I suspect if Adrian were sitting here he would tell you he spends a lot of his time at the drawing board – Paul might be able to confirm it – and has a very direct influence of exactly what goes on his cars. But everyone works differently. I spent quite a lot of time working for Ross Brawn. I was lucky enough to spend a fair amount of time working for Ross and saw in him a technical manager who didn’t try to involve himself in the minutiae but was very skilful at picking people for key rolls, for allocating the resources that the team had in a way that was likely to bring most performance for the least spend, and was good about leaving people space to work in and not micro-managing them – but equally was ready to step in if he saw things going wrong. That was a tremendous lesson, working under a guy like that. I try to make my own pale reflection of the way I saw him work – but honestly, whether a team is good or not depends massively more than who the technical director is. The team has to have strong people across the board – from the team principal and the board of the team right the way down to the machinists that are making the parts. There are so many components of a Formula One team and you can have no weak link otherwise nothing works.

Q: (Dieter Rencken – Racing Lines) To all except Arai-san, there’s been a lot of talk recently about banning wind tunnels, concentrating on CFD, possibly going as far as common chips, standardised chip sets. Seeing this has been discussed, how do you all feel about it, and seeing as it was mainly sparked off by Christian Horner, could I ask Paul to start please?

PM: It’s a proposal which has been originated in Red Bull. I think, at the moment, it moves to a strategy group to decide whether they want the sport to go in that direction. If it comes down from the strategy group, then much more of the technical detail can be resolved once we have a mandate to do so – or if we don’t, and at the moment, I wouldn’t want to say any more than that.

JA: I think Dieter knows my opinion on this, because we’ve discussed it before. I don’t think it’s the best direction for us to take as a sport. We do our best as teams to take our technical budgets and turn them into lap time. Aerodynamics are a huge part of the performance of your car and you need to be confident when you’re spending that budget that you’re going to deliver to your investors and your team the performance that you hoped you would do. At the moment, you wouldn’t find too many engineers who work in aerodynamics of any hue, who would recommend developing the type of thing we’ve got, using just CFD. It’s just too error-prone and you need to have the wind tunnel to keep dragging you back to reality and without that, you are at very high risk of spending your investors’ money foolishly and not delivering a car with the performance you thought you would have. That doesn’t really save any money or do anyone in the sport any good so I don’t think it’s the right direction.

PS: Yeah, I disagree with the proposal to ban wind tunnels. I think some of the restrictions we’ve put in place over the last few years have been quite sensible in terms of saving money and actually forcing us into being more efficient. I think that Formula One has contributed an awful lot to the improvements we’ve seen in CFD and I think that’s something that has gone on and benefitted a lot of different areas of society. So I think we are doing quite a good social… we have social responsibility in what we do. But I think the same applies with the wind tunnel and in fact not that long ago I was doing some work with one of the top major motor manufacturers, showing them how they could use their wind tunnels better on production road cars to decrease drag, increase fuel economy etc. It’s techniques that I think we develop in Formula One that are actually quite useful in other areas. We’ve invested a lot of money in wind tunnels, we’ve invested a lot of money in CFD – it’s not as cheap as some people might think. I think we have quite a good balance at the moment and I’m pretty happy with the way things are.

JK: I think every team will have a take on this, depending on their strengths and weaknesses, wind tunnels and CFD, but I suppose from my side, it’s really see what the strategy group decides and work  on it accordingly.

AG: Force India are always looking to be more efficient and save money so it’s an interesting discussion but it’s probably going to be a discussion that’s way above my pay scale.

Q: (Kate Walker – motorsport.com) To follow up on that question, the other week we had Bob Fernley saying something along the lines of the fact that F1 is supposed to be technologically forward and that wind tunnels were almost the dinosaur technology and that we needed to be more revolutionary and take more forward steps. Do you guys agree with that at all or is the wind tunnel too vital to your programmes, that you would like to retain it in some capacity?

PM: I suppose in our current format of working we’re dependant on the wind tunnel. If the format of our work changes and the wind tunnel is removed as a tool, we will find a way to work in the next environment. You adapt and that’s what we do. When rule changes come along, we adapt to those. If this is a rule change that’s invoked we’ll learn how to work with it. It’s a different way of competing with our opposition.

JA: Well, I think if anyone were to come and see inside any of our teams, I don’t think they would regard the aerodynamics department – which is a mixture of CFD and wind tunnel – is in any way not forward looking. As Pat was saying, the techniques we develop in both those spheres, in both wind tunnel and CFD, are impressive by any measure. We, as an industry, have caused the CFD tools for low speed aerodynamics to be pushed forward very nicely to the benefit of more than just Formula One so I don’t think there’s any need to worry about us using dinosaur technology. I just think it is the right combination of tools with technology as it stands today.

PS: I think it’s a clearly ridiculous provocative statement. Our wind tunnels are anything but dinosaurs. Just because a technology has been around for a while doesn’t mean that it joins those reptiles of old. Cars have been around for a long while. Are cars dinosaur technology? Maybe Bob ought to come and have a look at a decent wind tunnel and just see how technically advanced they are.

JK: Paul is right: you do adapt to stuff if you need to accordingly. There’s always that need if a rule changes but equally, wind tunnels are still developing, they’re not static. There’s new methods, there’s new ways of measuring stuff, there’s new ideas to make the most of them. As it stands today – and this is how everyone works – you’ve definitely got a split between how CFD complements wind tunnel and the other way round. There’s stuff in CFD you can do which you couldn’t do in a wind tunnel and it’s the same in reverse so they complement each other very well. And to just take one of them in isolation right now for any team, if you had to do it tomorrow, would be quite tricky, so I don’t agree with Bob’s view.

AG: I think Bob was trying to provoke a debate and he’s done that, for sure. It’s difficult for me to comment any further than what Paul suggested, that we’ll work around or work within the regulations as they’re written. If it means that it’s a CFD-based development, then we’ll work to it.