Q: Ross and Pat, questions really for both of you: it’s a vital weekend for you both, can you tell us how you approach this weekend, if anything’s different at all or is it all the same?
Ross BRAWN: No, just the same as previous weekends, there’s nothing different. We know what we’ve got to do and there’s a certain part of the equation which is out of our control but that part of the equation will only become relevant if we do our job as well, so to have any chance, Michael’s got to win the race, and then we’ve got see what Renault and Alonso can do. But it’s not changing our approach to the weekend. Q: Michael Schumacher is leaving Formula One this weekend; you’ve both had an affect on his career, he’s perhaps affected your careers as well. Give us just some insight as to how you’ve seen him develop over the years.
RB: I guess changes are quite gradual so it’s sometimes difficult to notice them but I think to summarise Michael, the thing that struck me the other day that’s quite outstanding is that he’s never had a bad period. He might have a bad race - I think every driver has a bad race - but he’s never had a period when you think he’s not performing terribly well. He’s always performed at top level all the time. Sometimes the races go well for him, sometimes they don’t but you get a footballer who goes through a bad spell or you get sportsmen – a golfer – goes through a bad spell. I can’t remember Michael actually ever going through a bad spell. He might have the odd race or very rarely two races that don’t work for him, but the fact that he’s been so consistent at the top, has featured in virtually every World Championship, challenging for it or being close for the whole of his career is really outstanding and I think that’s a measure of Michael Schumacher, and I’m sorry to see him go, but I’m delighted that he’s finishing showing the strength he has this season, and the competitiveness he has this season.
Q: A final question for you both, about engines this weekend; I think all four cars have got new engines this weekend, and of course, they’ve only got to last one race, so having said you approach the race as normal, how much are they just one race engines?
RB: Pat can go first this time.
RB: Over the life of two race engines, we have a certain number of higher rev laps you can do and they are generally spread over two races. I think all of us run low revs in practice, run medium revs in a race and then high revs in qualifying, and occasionally higher revs in a race if you need them. Of course, having a one race engine, those higher revs are available over one race instead of two, so if we need to, there’s a greater opportunity to run revs, but like Pat said, we won’t do it unless we have to and we’ve always taken that approach: you don’t use the revs unless you have to but we know they’re there if we need them.
Q: And the Suzuka problem?
RB: The Suzuka problem was a one off, we hope, and it was a failure of the top end of a valve where it connects to the collets around the pneumatic piston; nothing we’ve seen before, so we’ve been super-vigilant – we always are – but super vigilant on the build of these engines to try and make sure that we can avoid the problem occurring again but we don’t have a complete explanation for what happened.
QUESTIONS FROM THE FLOOR
Q: (Simon Arron – Motorsport News) Ross, you had an unusually poor season by Ferrari standards last year. You’ve come back very strongly this season. What, as you approach the final race, were the key factors in addressing last year’s problems and reversing them, and what impact did switching to a V8 have on design philosophy?
RB: I understand Patrick’s point of view with his team; we had a bad year but we’ve had good years with the same group of people, so we didn’t look towards making radical changes within the team, we just looked at where we felt we hadn’t made enough progress and just set higher targets, higher objectives for those areas and gave the people more resource to achieve it. There were some areas where we perhaps didn’t feel we’d made a big enough step between 2004 and 2005 and we moved resource within the company to those areas to strengthen them. I think the other thing was that it’s a fact that the one race tyre didn’t suit our philosophy, didn’t suit the tyre company’s philosophy and that didn’t help either so the change back to multi-tyre races was a help for us. V8-wise, obviously there’s a packaging exercise which is quite different. Tyres generally this year… it’s difficult to compare last year because of the one race tyre, but compared to 2004, we draw the comparisons, we’re obviously running softer this year than we were able to do in 2004. It’s not made a dramatic difference in the approach to the car, but obviously the V8’s a bit less fuel consumption, the driver’s on the throttle longer so it’s not as much as you might think, but the rest is really just down to packaging.
Q: (Anthony Rowlinson – Autosport) Ross, Ferrari and Michael have been the dominant forces in Formula One since 2000, pretty much. Could you explain how you’ve put that together, what team structures you’ve had to make that work and also how important Michael has been to that success?
RB: Well, I don’t think anyone puts a team together with the objective of dominating it. It would be presumptuous to say that. You put a team together to try and win a race and then when you win a race, you try and win another race and then you win enough races you win a championship and it goes from there. I think in our case, we’ve got a great group of people who have been exceptional in all their areas: the design group, the aero group, the chassis group and we’ve been fortunate to put all the right people together at the right time. Michael’s been a key element, because he’s been such a great example to people of the commitment and team spirit, team player that he is. So he’s not a guy who comes to the factory and says you must do this or you must do that. He will come to the factory and thank people for what they’ve done. He will come to the factory and try and explain what the car’s doing, and he will demonstrate his commitment and expect people to do the same. He’s been an inspirational figure, I would say, much more than someone who has an active role in the functioning of the team, but for him to come to the factory and talk to the designers and people like that means a huge amount to them and he’s been very good in that respect. He loves being part of the team, which I think is important as well. He’s enjoyed and probably continues to enjoy his time with Ferrari. But I’ve seen drivers come and go and most of them are looking after Number One. I think Michael’s unusual in that he’s just as concerned about the team and how it works and the wellbeing of the team as anyone, so I think that’s one of his strengths, for sure, over the years.
Q: (Mark Hughes – Autosport) Ross, from around mid-season you seemed to make a big jump in performance – could you talk us through the significant development steps responsible for that?
RB: These are very long answers! (laughs) I don’t think there was such a dramatic change. I said at the start of the season that I thought we had a good car, but that we didn’t make good use of it. We had a bit of a tardy pit stop in Bahrain and lost the race to Fernando by a very small margin, we made a bad tyre choice in Australia, but when they did actually start to work Michael was very quick, so I think we had a very good car in the early part of the year and we just put everything together from mid-season onwards. I must complement the guys at Ferrari on the progress made this year, as well. I think the rate of progress during the year has been the highest I’ve seen whilst I’ve been there and the failings in 2005 certainly wounded their pride and I think the effort made this year was quite exceptional. But it has been a very good car all year and I think it is just that we started to put all the bits together from mid-season.
Q: (Adam Hay-Nichols, Two Paws) Ross what will you take home as your best memory of working with Michael?
RB: I think his composure his exceptional. He never loses control with the team, with the people he works with; he never loses his temper. He is quite a firm character as he has to be, but he has always got composure both in and out of the car that is I think quite exceptional and, on top of that, I think his sheer speed. I mean all of the attributes that he has mean nothing if you don’t have the sheer speed that he has so… that’s two things!
Q: (Adam Hay-Nichols – Two Paw) Is there one event in particular that you will treasure?
RB: Not really; with Michael there have been many. It is very difficult to pick out individual events because there has been such an accumulation of them. I can’t pick out anything specifically, no.
Q: (Simon Arron – Motorsport News) Ross, obviously Michael would be in a better situation this weekend, but for a couple of own goals in Monaco and Hungary. Do you think that with the benefit of hindsight that Michael could have won in Monaco from row two or three and given the chance to do Hungary again would you have called the strategy differently in the last few laps?
RB: Well I do think hindsight is perfect vision and I think you look at the season overall you look at where you can improve for the future and the decisions that you make and undoubtedly in Hungary I wish I had told him to back off and take it easy in those last three laps so it is easy to look back and say ‘should have done this or that’. All you can do is take a balanced view over the whole season and look at the times when you made the right decisions and got things right and if that’s a reasonably decent percentage over the times you got it wrong, you can be satisfied. I don’t believe anyone gets it right all the time and we are in the fortunate position at the front and under close scrutiny all the time so perhaps our howlers show up a bit more, but I am pretty happy with the season and the fact that we are in this situation now being ten points behind is not just a reflection on Suzuka but on other things we didn’t quite get right during the year. We didn’t make a strong enough start and that’s why we are in this position now because I think for a large part of the season we had the upper hand and the championship is in the balance and favouring Renault because we didn’t have such a strong start to the season, but I don’t speculate on ‘what ifs?’ because racing is not like that. It is just so difficult that you can find lots of instances where you wish had done that or might have done this
and you just have to take a view over a period of time.
Q: (Andrea Cremonesi – La Gazzetta dello Sport) Ross, in what role will Michael be useful to you next season?
RB: I think Michael should take a little bit of time away from the business to reflect on what his ambitions are for the next part of his life. He has had a very clear programme with racing. We all have to be self-motivated, but we know we have to go to the next race and we have to be ready for it and your programme is mapped out for you pretty clearly each season and I think Michael now has to reflect on what his ambitions are for the next period of his life and how that can fit into Ferrari. I think he has a huge amount to give to Ferrari still, but I’m not sure personally that it will be in any kind of driving role. I think these cars are difficult to drive and to be able to drive them you have to be very fit and capable physically to drive them and even with the fitness regimes they have the drivers start the season with the first test and their necks are aching and their heads are falling off, they are finding it a struggle. So it is not a sort of situation where a driver can just pop in and have a go in a car and give you a diagnosis and then go again. I don’t think that is very practical. So I don’t think there will be any role of that sort with Michael. But he works so well with the engineers and he understands the way things work there could be a technical benefit in that area and obviously commercially there is huge potential for Michael and Ferrari both on the racing and on the road car side, so I think the best thing is that he needs now to reflect on the end of his career and see what he wants to do next. I don’t think it is clear to him and he needs some time away to arrive at that conclusion.
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