Q: It is a reflection of the reputation you made for yourselves?
RB: Yes.

Q: With the rhythm of the races at the moment, can you still envisage yourself coming back to the front in the next few races?
RB: We are still trying very hard. We were a bit disappointed with Magny-Cours because we had a very good test before that race and we definitely made progress with the car and thought we had made progress with the tyres and when we got into the race there we were very disappointed with the performance we had. We lost a lot of grip between Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and we still don’t fully understand why that is. It was on both cars, and a consistent loss of grip on both cars, obviously the conditions on Sunday afternoon were quite different to those on Friday and Saturday, so it is something we have to understand, but of course we have quite a lot to catch up, so we are pushing quite hard, a lot of new things, new tyres, new aero packages, and when we are pushing our hardest sometimes we can trip over. We have to stop and understand what is happening and re-group. So often, it is two steps forward and one back, it is a bit like Sam just described. We are reasonably happy here. From what we saw today it doesn’t show so much in the times but the programme we have here. We have two new tyres here which haven’t raced before and we wanted to give both tyres a long run, which meant we didn’t have a new tyre in the second session, but the consistency on the runs we did with Michael was quite encouraging, so if we can carry that through into Sunday then perhaps we can be reasonably competitive.

Q: In the FIA survey, which has recently been completed, 70 percent of the fans have said they prefer qualifying to be decided by the best time over a specified number of laps. What do you think of that idea?
RB: Could you explain that?

RB: I think we have been through a few experiments with qualifying and I think on reflection if we look back, and we must not look back with rose tinted spectacles, but we all prefer the old system, because that used to be the system where you saw the driver put in a banzai lap. He would put in a banker, get a lap time, then he would really go for it. Now we don’t see that, because they are all very conservative, they run cleanly, and it is not as exciting as it used to be in my view. The difficulty, and this is the curse of Formula One, is that whenever we want to make changes there are advantages and disadvantages for various teams when you try to make those changes in the short term. Somebody will be advantaged and somebody will be disadvantaged by any change in qualifying for next year, and trying to get all the teams to agree is not going to be easy. And that is the tragedy of Formula One that we make these short-term changes. Everyone here will have started designing their car, they will have been
designing it for one or two months assuming they have fuel for qualifying next year. So here we are in July having proposals put on the table for next year and then we say ‘hang on, we’re already designing our cars, you are being unreasonable. Think about the future of Formula One. But why couldn’t we have thought about the interests of Formula One a few weeks ago, before everyone started designing their cars. And this is the frustration we all have and that is the why it is so difficult to get consensus amongst the teams. These things come along too often. We all want the best qualifying we can have, we all have an opinion what that should be, and then we get asked in July, after all the cars are started, can we change the fuel capacity?

QUESTIONS FROM THE FLOOR

Q: (Bob Constanduros) With the 2008 proposals, which have already been published, you have had time to digest them, what is feasible and positive, what isn’t?
RB: I think the opportunity is moving away from us. I think 2008 was a great opportunity for all the teams to sit down and without fear of bias for their own personal situation, think about what regulations would be appropriate, having agreed the objectives. If you’re dealing with a problem, you sort out what the objectives are and then you try and find the solutions. I don’t think the objectives are agreed amongst all the teams, unfortunately, and even when they are agreed, it’s getting difficult to find agreement for the solutions for those objectives. You’ve just seen a little example where Pat’s view is that the qualifying that we have now is quite good whereas other people don’t think it’s good, so that’s the difficult we have. Talking about specifics, there are some things that I think are interesting and some things we don’t agree with but we’ve got to clarify the objectives and what we’re trying to achieve. And we want good entertaining racing, we want a viable business model, so that we can encourage teams to come into Formula One and thereby improve the whole show. It’s not a very good show with 20 cars. If we had 24 cars or 26 cars it would be a better show. People can’t afford to come into Formula One in the format it’s in now so I think there’s a whole list of objectives which we could sit down and sensibly discuss. We don’t have all the right ideas and the FIA don’t have all the right ideas but I think the teams as a group maybe, in the right environment, could discuss, in a way could come up with a set of sensible solutions. We’re missing that opportunity because of the political situation in Formula One. A solution which is arrived at from just the FIA and Ferrari is not going to be the best solution for sure. It may be the only solution if other people chose not to take part in it, but it’s not the best solution because we want a healthy debate with all the other teams to find the best solutions. I think there are some interesting ideas in there and I think there are a few things we don’t like but I think 2008’s turning into… if we’re not careful it will be a lost opportunity, because with that timescale two or three years away, we have a chance to try and discuss things without thinking about our own personal competitive position.

Q: (Andy Benson) Ross, can you explain why Ferrari didn’t respond to the new regulations as well as some other people? On the face of it, it is difficult to understand. You’ve had the best car for four years and now you don’t, it would appear. Maybe I’m wrong, it’s just down to the tyres. What’s the answer?
RB: Well, we’re still analysing that ourselves. We don’t have all the answers. We have an approach, we have a philosophy, we have a way of doing things, and obviously that has stood us in good stead for a number of years.
I think I have to say that particularly McLaren and Renault made very good progress. If you look at the regulation changes and you look at the time difference which you put into those regulations changes: aerodynamic, engine, tyres, then you come up with a laptime offset and I think that it’s fair to say that, certainly by this stage of the season, they’ve almost negated a lot of that loss of performance that came from the regulations, so they were able to find more in the new regulations than we were, so we’re trying to get that back. I know this is a very controversial subject, the whole business of testing and tyres and so on, but there is an element that we are the only prime tyre customer of Bridgestone and as I say, it’s a sensible and controversial subject and people will say, perhaps quite rightly, that that’s your own fault, but when you have such a substantial change in the tyre regulations, there is a steep learning curve and Bridgestone have one partner contributing to the learning curve and Michelin and their teams have the benefit of a group effort, so when the regulations change so fundamentally then that will be a factor. I think it’s levelling off now, let’s say the learning curve is levelling and I think there’s a better opportunity for us to get back onto competitive terms. But we were wrong-footed a little bit by the regulations and other teams do the better job.

RB: I agree with all of the points that have been said. I think it needs to be moderated in the way too much overtaking means its less of an event and whislt I feel we don't have enough overtaking, you can have too much of a good thing, so I think it needs to be something which people focus on. I think its like the football and basketball situation. I get fed up with the number of points they score in basketball but I quite like a few goals in football. Its that sort of thing. There is something wrong with formula one.
Just thinking about some experiences. At Imola we were two seconds faster than Fernando but he was able to drive in a way that didn't allow us to overtake. Slightly unusual circumstances to be two seconds a lap faster and not be able to overtake the guy in front. It shows the format of the cars and the format of the circuits is such that its not a good solution and I think that generally moving towards more mechanical grip and less aerodynamic grip seems to be a logical move because we've been going the other way for the last few years and demonstrated that we don't encourage overtaking. I would be in favour of moving in that direction. What are the correct levels is something to be established. Certainly I think we're going the wrong way in moving towards less mechanical grip. We've had grooved tyres and smaller tyres and we're still increasing the aerodynamic performance of the tyres and I think its probably the wrong route.

Q: (Niki Takeda – Formula PA) Four of you had an interest in going back to the old qualifying. Can you first of all give any suggestions first how to avoid an empty track for the first 20 minutes and secondly how to give equal coverage to the little teams?
RB: Equal coverage for the little teams is a difficult thing. I mean, they would get more coverage if they went faster, that is the fact of life. How artificial do we want to make the coverage? That is what we try to do with the current qualifying system, and I think everyone has agreed it is not a great success. In terms of making people run, our suggestion some time ago was that you get a set of tyres for each 15 minutes and if you don’t use them, you lose them. It would be an incentive to run each 15 minutes, or each half hour, that was our proposal a while ago.

Q: (Joe Saward – F1 Grand Prix Special) Last winter we had a lot of talk of testing and politics involved in all that. We have got through this season with six months through the year and we find a situation where Ferrari has done a lot more days than everyone else, but Ferrari’s mileage is the same as BAR’s. Have we learned anything from this?
RB: I think we have a political situation with testing. If we talk about efficiency, we own two test tracks, one of which is only licensed to run one car, so if we are looking at the number of days at Fiorano, by definition we can only do half the mileage than any other team can do for their day at another track. We feel that a mileage limit on testing would be more appropriate and other teams to work as efficiently as they can within that mileage limit, because I hear stories that teams go testing with two cars, with a back-up car, and crews who have to work all night to make sure they are ready at nine o’clock the next morning, certainly that is what we did when we were limited to the number of days, so we have to think that a mileage-based system would be easier to run, but people feel we have an advantage because we have our own tracks.

Q: (Peter Windsor – F1 Racing) One of your cars (Minardi) lost a lot of time in Magny-Cours with a fuel stop problem, why is it after 20 years that we continue to have fuel stop problems?
RB: One of the side issues of the changes in regulations is that we don’t get so many cock-ups in pit stops. It is a shame really. There are no wheel changes to go wrong any more and actually that was a bit of an element just thrown in there that gave a bit of chaos where someone occasionally would make some human error, and that was the great thing about the pit stops, is that it is quite a large group of people who had to be co-ordinated and get everything dead right otherwise the driver lost time. Things can go wrong with the fuel rig but that is now virtually the only thing that can go wrong in the pit lane. I used to sit there praying that someone would screw up on the tyre changes as long as it wasn’t us.

Q: (Thierry Tassin – RTBF TV) What do you think about the way Fernando Alonso is driving this year, and do you think he can be world champion this year?
RB: I think his performances have been extremely impressive. I have always been impressed with him as a driver but I think this year he has taken a step up and that often happens when a driver gets good equipment and gets everything working for him. We have experienced exactly the same situation with Michael and whoever has been driving alongside him, where in Renault’s case Fisichella is having a really tough year and Alonso is having a really great year and you cannot define why that is. It is just the driver gets the ball rolling, he gets everything behind him, and it is not the team’s intention to do that, but they get this momentum going and all of us has experienced that and when they do they achieve results. He has the momentum at the moment and he is doing a very impressive job. It doesn’t stop us trying to beat him! We saw, in very strange circumstances, that he didn’t score any points in North America and that could happen here or the next race and the situation could change. But he is doing a very good job and, apart from his faux pas in Canada he has had an exemplary year. I think it is just a shame the points system has changed because that makes him more difficult to beat. I never understood why the points system was changed, and I think it is a points system that is spoiling the championship.

Q: (Tony Dodgins) Pat made the point that if you start with the quick guys in the front they are going to run in that order in the race, and you made a suggestion about reversing the grid. Presumably, if you did that you would have to give significant points for qualifying as well. Is there any sort of will to do that, or is that something that has gone away?
RB: I think this year we would support reversal of the grid!

RB: Seriously, there are certain principals you have to maintain in Formula One and handicapping is not one of them. If we reverse the grid with a difficulty in overtaking, then why should anyone overtake? I think we can make qualifying interesting, we can make racing interesting, but we shouldn’t distort it.