Q: Ross, Bridgestone seem to have made a step forward in the last test at Barcelona. Is that something you envisage being carried forward to the future races?
Ross BRAWN: It’s not a specific step. They’ve been making good progress all year. I think last year we saw that we weren’t competitive enough. A big effort was put into a redesign of the tyres and that was helped when Williams and Toyota came along because they were able to contribute to that, so really the big step was over the winter and now we have a better foundation and there are much more productive incremental steps going on all the time. At Barcelona there was a new compound which we are running here. The construction is still the same. But Bridgestone are making very good progress and I think it has been helped with the addition of Toyota and Williams to the input. We are now able to go testing and be reasonably comfortable with Williams carrying out one programme and we carry out another programme and Toyota carry out a third programme and then we can put the information together. So the test programme is much more broadly based and I think it gives Bridgestone more confidence when they are getting information from two or three clients. Q: Michael had a pretty torrid time in Monaco for whatever reasons; have you seen a change in his mood since then?
RB: He’s a pretty determined guy always, but I think his drive in Monaco, after all the events was exceptional. What went on affects people in different ways, but for him, it seemed to make him even more determined. That’s where he seeks solace within the team and in his own performance. If it’s possible for someone like Michael to be even more determined because he’s already extremely determined then I think he is more determined to try to do well in the near future.
Q: A question to all of you; the president of the FIA was sitting up there an hour or so ago, and he said that if all teams agreed, he would suggest a change in qualifying by reducing the final session to 15 minutes rather than the current fuel-burning exercise. Would you agree with that?
RB: I think there’s a few options on the qualifying. First of all, I don’t like seeing too many changes. I think things need to settle down, so we can take a proper assessment of what we have. We’ve been guilty in the past of making too many changes and I think that confuses the public and I think it’s bad for Formula One. I hadn’t realised, but talking to enthusiasts, they actually quite enjoy the current qualifying because they get to see cars going round. People come here to see cars going round, sometimes in the competition of qualifying but also they get a thrill out of watching cars going round. Somebody told me the other day that they think the current qualifying is fantastic, because at least they see cars going round for 15 laps, which they don’t see on Friday morning, which they don’t see all the time. So I think we just need to be careful about making changes too quickly before we fully understand what we have to do, and I think we have to come up with a set of changes which don’t cause any disadvantage to the teams. The big issue is that teams have different sized fuel cells and they’ve made different sized fuel tanks with their view of the regulations. Unfortunately, some of the proposals which were made maybe favoured people with a bigger or smaller fuel tanks and that’s why it stalled. It became difficult to find a solution between the teams. So I’m just advocating taking it easy, not making changes too quickly. A change from 20 minutes to 15 minutes is not a big deal for us, it wouldn’t make any difference to qualifying; it would be three or four laps less running around. So we mustn’t do anything that changes the equilibrium of the size of fuel cell that you chose to have and the advantage and disadvantages of that.
Q: (Ted Kravitz – ITV) A question for Ross, first of all: Ross, we’ve got two high speed circuits coming up very shortly. Do you really need to be taking 20 points away from those races in order to get your championship back on track.
RB: It wasn’t so clear at the beginning of the season but we’ve been strong at all circuits. At the beginning of the year we had an engine problem at the second and third races. We chose the wrong tyre at the third or fourth race, I can’t remember. So we didn’t do a very good job but the car has been good at all circuits, so I fully expect it to be good in Canada, Indianapolis.
Regarding the points; you can argue the points system both ways, depending on what situation you’re in. I’m sure Pat’s very pleased with the points system the way it stands at the moment and wouldn’t be so happy if he was where we stand, but that’s natural. That’s the system we want to work with and that’s the system that exists. We’ve had years when we managed to build a good lead. What would be ideal for us is obviously a DNF for Fernando, not wishing it on him too strongly but it would be nice if he didn’t finish one race because that would just reset the championship enormously. If both drivers finish, then it’s going to be a very hard slog for us for the rest of the year. We’ve really given Renault too good a head start and we’re going to have to work very hard to get that back. It’s never over until it’s mathematically impossible and I think there’s still a very strong championship ahead of all of us.
Q: (Ted Kravitz - ITV) And for the rest of you, the Ferrari seems to be one of the more aerodynamically efficient cars on the grid. Would you expect them to be strong on the two circuits?
RB: We have a good engine, and I think we have a very efficient car, and when we looked at where we were last year… what tends to happen is that the teams pick a drag level to try and optimise their car around and I think last year we got it slightly wrong, the drag level which we optimised our car around. We’ve optimised our car this year around a different drag level, knowing what the V8 output would be, and our whole group focused on efficiency around that drag level. Now I know you can say everybody’s doing that, but it was a slight change for us, because last year, we were just looking for downforce regardless of efficiency, and at the end of the day, it probably wasn’t the right approach. There were times when we suffered because of it and partway through last year we changed our philosophy and this is the car that we have, so it is a very efficient car with a good engine.
Q: (Alberto Antonini – Autosprint) Ross, you just mentioned the problem you had with the engine in races two and three. What if you had been in 2008 already and you had your engine design frozen under the Max Mosley proposed regulation applicable then?
RB: It’s a very strong move but it’s got good motives behind it, I think, to freeze the engines, or as they prefer, homologate the engines as they stand now. It is a very brave move but there’s a lot of sense behind it in terms of trying to contain the costs. I think there was some discussion – I know there was some discussion about trying to just free it up a little bit in a cost-effective way to allow some areas for the engineers to work in which were economic, perhaps where areas which were not proportional to the amount of money you spend but areas where you could see genuine innovation and the application of clever engineering. That started with the so-called Maranello discussions which involved Renault, Cosworth and Ferrari, and I think that was fairly sensible but then, as that got expanded out into other teams it just kept going on and on and on and the scope or the freedom that was requested from the engine suppliers just got to a level where nothing was being achieved again so I think the FIA have said no, stop, we’re going back to square one again, and this is what you’re going to have. Maybe, there is still some room for negotiation but I think that we were so far away from what was trying to be achieved, it wasn’t achieving very much and I can see why Max has said no, this is enough. We’re going to go back to rules that we already have because we only considered changing the rules if there was a better proposal. I tend to agree with him that it was heading off in a direction that was no longer logical because there were things that were frozen and things that were free and we really weren’t saving very much money over what we’re spending now.
Q: (Panos Diamantis – Car and Driver) Ross, you said you have an efficient engine. Do you think you have the upper hand over Renault in this particular area and do you think it will allow you to run more downforce at this race?
RB: We have an engine that’s competitive, I don’t know if it’s better or worse than Renault. As well as just horsepower there are all sorts of other factors that are relevant in assessing engines: fuel efficiency, driveability, low-down torque which is very important for the starts, and it’s not easy to compare engines directly. We’ve just got to be looking at different cars. We’re running more downforce than in previous races and looking at Renault they are using less downforce than in previous races, so it’s interesting that they’ve sought a different compromise. They have the benefit of having more testing here, but today they’re running…all the teams do a simulation and from that they produce a curve to find an optimum, and because we hadn’t tested here before, we expected the track to be a little bit more slippery so we thought the high-downforce set-up was more optimum, and perhaps we’ll come back a little stronger tomorrow. Around the downforce, we do simulations to tell us what’s the most efficient in terms of the engine and the aerodynamic package we have, and it ends up where it ends up. We’re running a little bit more downforce than we’ve perhaps run at previous tracks.
Q: (Niki Takeda – Formula PA) To all of you, as technical directors, how do you entertain the idea of a single tyre in the near future? Does it take some fun away?
RB: I think as an engineer it’s been a fantastic competition. It can be very frustrating but it can also be very rewarding, but it is a huge commitment to provide tyres. The cost involved and the time involved, for us, it was very difficult to come to a test agreement because of the huge commitment from Bridgestone to try and test and develop the tyres, but I think it just changes the priority because currently if we have a certain imbalance with the car and certain issues we want to try to address to try and develop the tyres to try and solve those problems. It can be a little more technical because if you want to then fix an imbalance you have to fix the car instead of the tyres and then it just changes things. You can argue about the domination both ways a bit more because if somebody become dominant with their car on a control tyre, then that’s very difficult to catch up than if a team that’s dominant because they have the best tyres. It does save money for the teams but it also means there’s less money coming into Formula One because there’s less money coming in from Bridgestone and Michelin and so the whole situation changes. In terms of advantage/disadvantage, I think we are a team who had to adapt to Bridgestone tyres when Goodyear pulled out and I think now there’s teams who will have to adapt to Bridgestones next year because of Michelin’s decision to withdraw, not the FIA’s not Ferrari’s and not any of the Bridgestone teams. We will be more familiar with the tyres next year. If we don’t do a good job then it won’t matter too much, but if we don’t do a good job, it will show because other teams will have to gain that experience Bridgestone are gonna step back two or three stages because our current tyres are very expensive to produce and I don’t think they want to spend that sort of money unnecessarily, and from 2008, we’ll have the issue of the control tyre and I think that for 2008 it will re-set the reference again. We’ll have slick tyres, different size tyres, everyone will be starting again, but I have to say I think Ferrari and Toyota and Williams will all have a benefit because of the relationship they have with Bridgestone next year.
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