Q: So let's change the focus to this race; what are the main challenges that you face coming to a brand new circuit like this?
RB: Yeah, I think what Sam said, it's the same for everybody. It is a difficult challenge, a new circuit, but nobody has any different situations. It's the same for all of us. I think there's greater potential for one of the tyre companies to get it right, and one to get it wrong because we have no knowledge of the surface, we have no knowledge of the way the track develops over the weekend, so I think in this particular race there's a chance we might see one of the tyre companies dominate, because they're the ones who have done some homework and guessed it right. That tends to happen when you have a new circuit and of course, after the first race we all learn and come back and the gap narrows again.

Technically, I think it's a circuit which is going to be very strong on traction, very strong on braking, doesn't have very many fast corners, so it doesn't really favour our package. I think if you look at the sector times from Malaysia where Sam said they were much more competitive, you can see that we were very quick in the middle sector, they were quick in the other sectors, and I think this is going to be quite a close race, because the track doesn't have many fast corners. Originally it was configured with a fast complex and then, during the period of building the track, they changed it and now it's got no real fast corners. Difficult to say the overtaking potential of the track until we start driving round. I think some of the Formula One drivers have had a look in road cars, but that doesn't really tell you a lot and I think it will depend on what lines they can take in and out of the slow corners, but from looking at it from the map, I think it looks as if it has great overtaking potential, and I
think there have been some lessons learned from the circuits that have been built recently to give that opportunity.

Sand will be a big factor. Those of us who have been motor racing a long time remember Zandvoort, I'm sure you do, and that used to give us some particular challenges. I think most people here have got much thicker air filters on the engine and are looking at any little orifices where sand can get in. And it's not the sort of sand that we see on the floor. It's a very fine powder that lives in the air. That's the thing that going to hurt us. That's a new challenge for us, so plenty of new things. But as we say, it's the same for everyone, so we just need to keep reminding ourselves.

Q: You mentioned the guesswork of tyres, is that really what it is? Guesswork?
RB: It is a bit at this stage. I think both tyre companies have been here and studied the make-up of the tarmac. You look at the granular composition of the tarmac, you can take little models of castings off the surface and go back and study them, but there are things like the colour; it's very black so it absorbs a lot of heat. The track temperature will be very high for a relative ambient here and we don't know how the rubber is going to settle down on the track, so I think it's an educated guess but there's a huge potential to get it wrong.

Q: Ross, what about the rest of preparation; how can you simulate a lap of this circuit?
RB: We had a pretty good map given to us with which we were able to plot the trajectory of the track and we've got some quite good people, as all the teams have, who can do these simulations and give us a good idea of the ratios and cornering speeds. It's a medium hard brake circuit so we've been able to do a brake duty cycle and things like that. Downforce is an easier problem these days because we only have one wing. The wing is controlled now and it's a smaller wing than you would chose to run at most circuits, so the downforce comparisons are not quite so critical on new circuits these days. But the simulations are quite good, so you certainly come to a circuit like this with a lot more information than you would have had a few years ago. That's why I say it's an interesting challenge, a new circuit. There will be some things which we hadn't anticipated but these days you do come quite well prepared.

Q: You say there are one or two things you haven't anticipated; have there been any surprises so far, perhaps the track temperature and even the ambient today?
RB: It's probably a fraction warmer than our forecast predicted. There was a period of mid- to high twenties. It's getting above that now, but having come from Malaysia I don't think there's anything new about that. Both drivers are having a look at the circuit and no doubt they will make some comments. They are really the best judges of what's going on. We walk round and have a look round and see some interesting points, but when you've got drivers of the calibre of Rubens and Michael, they're the guys who you really expect to give you a first impression and what areas to look at, what areas to concentrate on. You can see from the map it's braking and traction, a slow corner performance track so no surprises so far, but if I knew what they were, they wouldn't be a surprise.

Q: There is a possibility of further fine tuning, is there Ross?
RB: I don't know. I think it's a very delicate point, the qualifying situation. We all want something that is as entertaining as possible but I know even amongst you journalists you can't make your minds up what would be the best format, because you're all saying different things. And we're the same, we all have different views about what we think would be the ideal format and unfortunately in Formula One we don't get much opportunity to try things out, to see if they work, change them etc. I think the way it's been reorganised is a reasonable step. It gives TV that one hour of let's say proper qualifying, it gives a gap between the two qualifying sessions which should allow you to recover a car, for instance, if you fall off in the first session. Drivers were having to be conservative because if they dropped the car in the first session, they then didn't take part in the second session, because the car couldn't come back, so it's things like that which will help and then we major on the second session
as being the prime qualifying event.

But it's difficult to make changes. We've all built cars with reduced fuel capacity now, because we don't make so many one-stop races and we're all qualifying with fuel, so it's not easy to go back without penalising some of the cars, some of the teams who've perhaps put their minds to taking the best from the current qualifying format. I don't think you should be chopping and changing the format too often. Obviously if something's very wrong then it needs to be fixed for the good of Formula One but, as I say, I hope... Two intelligent require contrary opinions from two of your learned colleagues about how Formula One qualifying should be in the future and it just shows how difficult it is to find an ideal solution.

Q: So the question is how difficult were the logistics to do three flyaways in a row, when basically all the cars and equipment have not been home for six or eight weeks, whatever it's been now?
RB: I think the same. I have to say that we've got some people looking after that; for me, it's pretty transparent, I don't have to worry about it, because they do a good job and as Sam said, it's the same as last year with Brazil. The engines and gearboxes get shipped back and forward, the uprights get shipped back and forwards and the guys stay on after each race to strip the cars and make sure there's no major dramas discovered after the race that we need to react to. And then I think they came out here on Sunday evening, had a day off on Monday and started work on Tuesday. It's not that difficult.

It's difficult if you want to make any developments to the car, when you have to look upon it generally as a period when you're going to have a fairly fixed spec on the car, so there's very little... not a lot of development can go on during this period. Of course we fix problems that we have, because we have to. But I think most people have been testing, been testing for the past few weeks, probably working on packages for Imola for instance, we have certainly, and I think that tends to be the trend, that for the first three flyaways, you have the car that you have. Then, when you get back to Europe, you can start to do more race to race development on the car.

Q: You were mentioning your simulations; obviously you will know more tomorrow, but today, it would be very interesting what you've found out on lap times, on gear changes and on top speed and maybe the overall race time for this Grand Prix?
RB: Can I give it to you later. I can't remember.

I think that the important thing about a simulation is that for us, anyway, the lap time is a little bit arbitrary. We're not that interested in the lap time, we're more interested in the gears we need and perhaps the average speed in the corners, things like that, so that we can start to think about the set-up of the car, so the actual lap time is really only a nominal number and it's a comparative number to other simulations we have. But the one thing we don't know is the grip of the surface so you could have a lap time that varies enormously. Our impression is that this will be a very grippy surface but if you change the grip factor in a simulation it changes the lap time by several seconds so we don't have that data at the moment.

Q: To both of you, the lap times were dropping fairly significantly and talk of increasing speeds, possibly increasing danger. What's your view on the current situation in terms of speed and is there something that needs to be done, if so, what is it?
RB: I think there is a process which myself and I think Sam's been sometimes, but every team is involved in the Technical Working Group which is chaired by Charlie Whiting and that group, in the background, tries to progress things like an analysis of the current performance of the cars and where we need to be. We try to do that in a structured way, and in 2006 there's a fairly major changing coming in the design of the cars, to reduce the speeds. Whether the speeds have improved more than we anticipated is difficult to be sure of. I know some drivers have made some comments.
When you have a tyre war, it's a bit unpredictable where you're going to end up, but certainly, for 2006, l think we're all working hard to find a new technical package which we can all be happy with to reduce the speeds of the cars but I think that's a natural process because periodically you just have to change the speed of the cars because you've got ten teams with hundreds of engineers constantly working, trying to improve the speed of the cars so every so often you have to peg that back. As I say, I think that's a natural process and one which we're all supportive of and we accept because we all work under the same principles, the same rules, it's the same for everyone so we're not really interested in the absolute speed of the cars, we're only interested in beating each other, so the absolute speed is really not what we're trying to achieve, we're just trying to do a better technical job than the other teams. That could be with a car which is five seconds slower, it doesn't make so much difference.

I think Formula One needs to be a fast car; I don't think we can have something which is too slow. So there is a process ongoing to reduce the speed of the cars and that's where we're at and I think in 2006 you will see that there will be a step. We know that from 2008 onwards there's a new engine formula coming and we're looking at whether that engine formula can be anticipated but unfortunately it all starts to get rolled up in other factors of Formula One in the present day with the Concorde Agreement and things like that which would be nice to get resolved. But I think that in my view, the best package will also resolve around the reasonably substantial drop in the performance of the engines, because everyone is knocking on 900 horsepower now, and when we started this formula we had just over 700, so we need to get that back down to 700 again and start the process of trying to get back to 900.

Q: This is for Ross, there were some proposals from you where you expressed some criticism on the way the single engine rules were applied with people being allowed to change an engine because their car ran off the track and not because they had an engine failure. I wonder if there has been any clarification for the teams from the FIA on this matter?
RB: I think sometimes I've got a tendency to probably say a bit too much. It wasn't really a strong criticism, it was a comment that...my feelings were that the engine change came about because you had a problem with the engine, not as a strategic decision because when the one engine rule was brought in, I remember discussions about strategic engine changes and quite clearly that is not what was intended.

You could go to Monza and maybe you've got a particular reason for wanting to run two full days of practice with one engine, then change the engine for the race and accept the ten place penalty. We're not trying to do that, we're trying to develop engines which can do seven or eight hundred kilometres at a track like Monza, because that's the direction we all wanted to go in and I think in the future that concept will be expanded, perhaps two or three race engines and if we're going to do that, we need to understand whether let's say strategic engine changes are part of the package.

I think it's a shame if they are, because then you end up perhaps developing a 350 kilometre spec engine and a 700 kilometre spec engine and we're back into escalating costs again and we don't want to get involved in that. I don't think anyone wants it, I think there should just be some better guidelines as to when we're allowed to change an engine. Those cars, as I understood, were in parc ferme and in parc ferme, you need to have a good reason to change a component. It just needs clarification. It's not a big issue for us, we would just like to have a clearer view.