FIA Friday Press Conference – Japan at LinesMaker.com

FIA Friday Press Conference – Japan

Repro­duced with kind per­mis­sion of the FIA

Team Rep­re­sen­ta­tives – Gior­gio Ascanelli (Toro Rosso), Pat Fry (Fer­rari), James Key (Sauber), Paddy Lowe (McLaren), Adrian Newey (Red Bull), Naoki Toku­naga (Renault).

Q: Naoki, do you regard this as a home race?
Naoki Toku­naga: Yes of course. Com­ing back to Suzuka is always quite a good feel­ing. Not only because the cir­cuit is very chal­leng­ing both for the dri­ver and the engi­neer but also it is my home Grand Prix. Also the fans, they are fan­tas­tic. They are always respect­ful with us and very happy and they know how to enjoy their race week­end. This year I came here with a lit­tle bit extra emo­tion obvi­ously after the tragedy, so I am quite happy that the fans and the teams all got together again here in Suzuka for this great sport­ing event.

Q: When Honda and Toy­ota were involved there were a lot of Japan­ese peo­ple in For­mula One, but not so many these days. What is your back­ground and how did you get into For­mula One?
NT: I stud­ied in Japan and since then I have always wanted to work in motor­sport and in par­tic­u­lar For­mula One. My career started in an auto­mo­tive com­pany in Japan, but I always wanted to seek an oppor­tu­nity in Eng­land to get a job and luck­ily I think it was in 2000 I got the job as a vehi­cle dynam­ics engi­neer at Enstone. It is how my career started and I enjoy the life there. It looks like it is a bit stuck in Eng­land but, nonethe­less, it is not at all a bad coun­try and I am quite happy being there.

Q: This week­end so far, are you happy to be back on this cir­cuit rather than the slower cor­ners of Sin­ga­pore.
NT: Yes, this cir­cuit is quite hard on tyres because the tyre energy as a biprod­uct of the tyre forces are quite high. Espe­cially the front tyres. It is one of the high­est cir­cuits of all grand prix tracks. Cou­pled with this is the abra­sive sur­face of the tar­mac. Those com­bined can make the tyre degra­da­tion quite high so I think it is impor­tant you set the car bal­ance right to avoid under­steer in the high speed cor­ner. We focussed today on get­ting a good bal­ance and we worked on ride height and spring rates to get an easy to drive car. In P1 the bal­ance is a lit­tle bit loose on the rear and poor trac­tion. The good thing is the front of the car was quite strong in mid-corner so we try to keep it and we worked on the rear to get it a lit­tle bit bet­ter. Also we try a lit­tle bit new dif­fer­en­tial map­ping to help trac­tion so in P2 the dri­vers were gen­er­ally much hap­pier so I think it was good sessions.

Q: Gior­gio, we heard basi­cally the expan­sion plans of the team at the Ital­ian Grand Prix. Tell us how those are going and in com­par­i­son to the RRA, the Resource Restric­tion Agree­ment.
Gior­gio Ascanelli: Well, we have devel­oped a plan. We will increase our capac­ity in aero­dy­nam­ics, of course, and then in more or less every other part of the com­pany. The accent is on aero­dy­nam­ics and sim­u­la­tion. As per the RRA they are not a con­sid­er­a­tion yet. I don’t think we are going to hit the lim­its any­way. A good selec­tion of peo­ple is ongo­ing and we will have to try to make the best of it.

Q: Look­ing for­ward, when it comes to next year the rules are pretty much the same. But with the exhaust, how big a change is that?
GA: It is a very large change. I think this morn­ing our car was quite bet­ter than this after­noon just because we had an evo­lu­tion of the exhaust which unfor­tu­nately broke on us. I don’t quite see this hap­pen­ing next year.

Q: Which, you don’t see such break­ages hap­pen­ing next year?
GA: I think there is going to be more lim­ited space for development.

Q: So there is more work than per­haps would appear to be appar­ent?
GA: Yes.

Q: James, you have brought a lot of stuff this race. It’s an impor­tant race for one of your dri­vers. How has the test­ing gone dur­ing the ses­sion?
James Key: It has been okay. We had a lot of new bits. It wasn’t just pure aero parts, there were mechan­i­cal parts involved in the bits we brought so we were pretty method­i­cal this morn­ing going through every­thing to check the affects of what we brought to make sure there were no hid­den issues. That seemed to be okay. This after­noon we have been work­ing more with the pack­age that we have. The bal­ance of the car needs improv­ing at the moment, but the num­bers we are see­ing, the data all stacks up to what we expected, which is the most impor­tant thing. So I think so far so good but there is cer­tainly some work to do this evening to get more out of it at the moment.

Q: Was that an effect from Force India push­ing you or was it already planned?
JK: It was always planned to have an update for Suzuka. We have pushed it fairly hard recently because of Force India’s good form of late but this time last year we set out when the major pack­ages we wanted to intro­duce would be tar­geted for and Suzuka was the last major pack­age of the year so we always had a plan to come here with some new parts.

Q: Paddy, inter­est­ing that both your dri­vers spoke about bet­ter straight­line speed now and also a bet­ter rear wing for qual­i­fy­ing. How has that hap­pened?
Paddy Lowe: Well we have a new rear wing which is bet­ter for qual­i­fy­ing! The prin­ci­pal dif­fer­ence between qual­i­fy­ing and the race is the DRS so it doesn’t take a rocket sci­en­tist to work out that that is the rea­son. We have a wing and we have made a step on the dif­fer­ence between DRS on and off. That was the wing, actu­ally, that we had in Sin­ga­pore. Orig­i­nally intended for this race but we man­aged to bring it early to Singapore.

Q: In terms of the rules talk­ing about DRS, what changes for 2012? How have you been able to develop for 2012?
PL: This was the first year using it obvi­ously so for all the teams it was a big learn­ing curve. A big area, a big oppor­tu­nity to make a dif­fer­ence against your com­peti­tors. The rules next year are exactly the same with the DRS so we will see the tech­nol­ogy will mature more. Prob­a­bly we will see less dif­fer­ences between the teams in terms of DRS effect. But we will still find more bit by bit.

Q: Just going back to DRS it was slightly more com­pli­cated than just open­ing and clos­ing the flap?
PL: Do you mean in terms of how it works through the race and though the event?

Q: Yes.
PL: I think it has been a fas­ci­nat­ing area for this year not just for the actu­ally race and the enter­tain­ment it has given with eas­ier over­tak­ing which I think has trans­formed the nature of races. Tech­ni­cally it has been fas­ci­nat­ing. It has added a whole new dimen­sion to the process of select­ing the best wing for an event. It used to be quite a one dimen­sional task, run a wing, have a lit­tle look at what your com­peti­tors were doing as well iter­ate through the week­end to the right wing level. Now you have an extra dimen­sion which is what is your qual­i­fy­ing pace, what’s your race pace with the DRS, with­out it, and even with the com­pli­ca­tion that if it is rain­ing in qual­i­fy­ing then you can­not use the DRS. You might have to fac­tor that in if it’s a week­end with poten­tial rain. Lots of com­pli­cated sums for the guys to do in the office with the com­put­ers to work out what’s the best plan.

Q: Adrian, Kamui Kobayashi said yes­ter­day that one of the great strengths of Sebas­t­ian Vettel’s was his abil­ity to com­mu­ni­cate to the engi­neers. Tell us about that and his other strengths.
Adrian Newey: He is a very bright young lad who thinks a lot about what he does. Takes a lot of time to try and under­stand the car, under­stand his own per­for­mance. Like most good dri­vers he has a good feel­ing for the car. He is very strong in some areas. He has a very good feel­ing for the tyres, what can I say.

Q: Is that com­mu­ni­ca­tion though some­thing that stands out as you have worked with many dri­vers over the years?
AN: I think Sebas­t­ian is very gifted nat­u­rally but he works hard at it and that is always the hall­mark of a great driver.

Q: Some of the dri­vers you’ve worked with, have they worked as hard or can you just see an extra dimen­sion from him?
AN: Pass.

Q: In terms of today, how are your feel­ings about today? It is inter­est­ing three man­u­fac­tur­ers in the first three places.
AN: It’s Fri­day, what can I say. It’s the usual thing on a Fri­day. We don’t know exactly what fuel loads peo­ple are run­ning and every­body is try­ing to under­stand what suits their car on the day. I think Fri­day, get on and do your own job and then Sat­ur­day and Sun­day you start to find out where you are.

Q: A lot of teams say this cir­cuit suits their car bet­ter. They weren’t so happy with the slower cir­cuits such as the slower cor­ners of Sin­ga­pore, but your car seems to work every­where. is that the case?
AN: I will be able to tell you on Sun­day evening.

Q: But you’re happy with the per­for­mance so far?
AN: So far, yeah.

Q: Pat, the tyres this year were obvi­ously very new. What sort of changes do you see for next year?
Pat Fry: Well the rear con­struc­tion is chang­ing. Com­pounds are chang­ing so exactly what that is, I don’t think it is going to be a big step or as big a step in terms of how the degra­da­tion of the tyres is affected. I don’t think we will actu­ally know until we actu­ally run them.

Q: That is some­thing you have had a prob­lem with in terms of tem­per­a­ture. Is that some­thing you can see a lit­tle bit the goal­post mov­ing and is that going to be a prob­lem aim­ing at those goal­posts next year?
PF: I don’t think so. I think the goal­posts are going to be in a sim­i­lar posi­tion. We have just got to move our car so we are work­ing closer to the right area and that’s what we are work­ing on now and over the winter.

Q: At what point is the car at the moment? We have heard talk about how it is going to be a much more aggres­sive, rev­o­lu­tion­ary car next year.
PF: Things are pro­gress­ing as you would expect this time of year really. It’s the same bunch of guys. They are moti­vated and doing a great job. We will never know if it is good enough really until the first race.

Q: is it more rev­o­lu­tion­ary?
PF: It’s dif­fer­ent. It looks a lit­tle bit dif­fer­ent but I think there are exhaust rules chang­ing. There are lots of lit­tle bits that will end up with the cars look­ing slightly dif­fer­ent but I wouldn’t class it as a rev­o­lu­tion as such.

Q: Are there such things as rev­o­lu­tions in For­mula One now?
PF: Not really, no. It is just hard work isn’t it?

QUESTIONS FROM THE FLOOR

Q: (Sarah Holt – BBC Sport) Adrian, we’ve seen that you’ve built cars for lots of for­mer cham­pi­ons who have been crowned here in Japan, from Senna to Prost to Hakki­nen. How would you rate Vet­tel amongst those for­mer cham­pi­ons?
AN: Unfor­tu­nately I wasn’t involved with Ayr­ton when he was crowned cham­pion here, so I can’t com­ment on that one. It’s a bit along the lines of the ques­tion ear­lier. I think Sebas­t­ian is obvi­ously supremely tal­ented but I kind of feel it’s unfair to start com­par­ing one dri­ver I’ve worked with against another.

Q: (Sarah Holt – BBC Sport) Do you think he might have the poten­tial to go on and be a mul­ti­ple World Cham­pion even beyond this sea­son?
AN: I think undoubt­edly yes, there’s no doubt Sebas­t­ian can do it. It’s up to us to try and deliver the car that allows him to do it.

Q: (Will Bux­ton – Speed TV) Not a tech­ni­cal ques­tion but one for every­body. We move on to Korea next, which was a new track last year, and then on to India, which is a new track for this year. How impor­tant do you see the con­stant expan­sion of the For­mula One cal­en­dar, and for you, and your teams, how much are look­ing for­ward to India? How much can we learn from India? How much can they learn from For­mula One?
AN: I think it’s great to be going to new places. India is obvi­ously a coun­try we’ve never been to before so in that sense it’s very good, we enjoy going to new cir­cuits. The only caveat I would put on that is that it’s impor­tant that we don’t for­get our long-standing tra­di­tional cir­cuits. Com­ing to Suzuka or Monza, Spa, all the great clas­sic cir­cuits that we have and still do go to – I think it would be an awful shame if they dropped of the cal­en­dar because, at the end of the day, it’s those that are there year-in, year-out and if For­mula One lost them, it might be dif­fi­cult to ever get them back again.
PL: It is a World Cham­pi­onship, so I think bring­ing the race to more parts of the world… India is a very major pop­u­la­tion cen­tre in the world, so I think it’s great to be going there. We need to go to more places. Going to the States next year is also a really great step.

Q: (Dieter Rencken – The Cit­i­zen) It looks as though fighter pilot-like canopies are going to be inevitable in For­mula One. What are the tech­ni­cal chal­lenges and do you feel that a closed cock­pit runs counter to the spirit of For­mula One?
AN: I don’t think they are inevitable, actu­ally.
PL: I don’t think it’s inevitable. It’s some­thing that’s being stud­ied. A lot of dis­cus­sion has occurred at coun­cil meet­ings in the FIA as to whether such a thing is right for the sport. An essen­tial fea­ture of For­mula One is that it’s open-wheeled and open-cockpit. I think the deci­sion, if ever it was taken, to close the cock­pit would be very, very fun­da­men­tal and I think those coun­cil­lors have already expressed reser­va­tions about that, so I think there would have to be a very, very com­pelling case made that that was an essen­tial fea­ture for safety. Some work is being done to research into it and so far I don’t think that a com­pelling case is emerg­ing, even though there is a risk… I think the biggest risk still present in For­mula One, to a dri­ver, is in that area, as we saw with Felipe the other year, but it’s not nec­es­sar­ily proven that a canopy is the right solu­tion to that.

Q: (Ralf Bach – Sport Bild) Mer­cedes, next year, has five for­mer tech­ni­cal direc­tors employed, a new For­mula One record; how can you sur­vive against them with all this human brain-power?
PL: I hadn’t realised it was five. Yeah, that is a lot. Yeah, all is lost. I think we should just all go home! No, they’re all good guys. We know them all. I think it’s a strong team. We look for­ward to com­pet­ing against them.
AN: Sim­i­larly, I’m going to worry about what we do in Mil­ton Keynes, not what’s hap­pen­ing in Brack­ley, to be per­fectly hon­est.
PF: Same. I’m not really think­ing about it, to be hon­est. I’ve got my own issues and things to sort out. It’s a strong team, as Paddy says. Time will tell, won’t it?
NT: Each team has its own approach and I think we have a dif­fer­ent approach. To tell the truth, I am con­cen­trat­ing on our team, the struc­ture and strat­egy, how to dis­trib­ute our resources. We have a dif­fer­ent approach.
GA: Or all six of us could go to Mer­cedes as well and make it 11! Mer­cedes could man­age enough, they pay well, I’m sure we could agree on some­thing!
JK: It’s always dif­fi­cult to com­ment on what other teams are doing, because you never really know how they are struc­tured and how they work. As Paddy said, it’s a pretty strong line-up of peo­ple, all with good expe­ri­ence. Per­son­ally, I’ve only really worked for rel­a­tively small teams and I guess the one thing I could say from a small team’s per­spec­tive is that effi­ciency is cer­tainly bet­ter when you’re small and I guess with more peo­ple, par­tic­u­larly good expe­ri­enced peo­ple, maybe that takes a bit more man­ag­ing, to make sure it all fits in together – but it’s not really for me to say.

Q: (Paolo Ian­ieri – La Gazzetta dello Sport) Adrian, Fer­rari is promis­ing a very aggres­sive new car for next sea­son. McLaren’s dri­vers, also, were com­plain­ing some­how, because the car this year was not as pow­er­ful and as com­pet­i­tive and they have put a lot of pres­sure [on their team]. What is the Red Bull going to be next year? Will it be an evo­lu­tion of what we have now? Do you think that the advan­tage that you have is enough or are you going to explore new roads and sur­prise every­body again?
AN: I think that fun­da­men­tally there’s no point in doing some­thing new if it’s not bet­ter, so our approach is cer­tainly not com­pla­cency, so we’re not think­ing: ‘we don’t have to do any­thing, we’ll still be quick enough next year.’ That would be enor­mous folly. We’re work­ing away try­ing to deal with the reg­u­la­tion changes. I think, as men­tioned, the restric­tion on the exhaust exit posi­tion is actu­ally a very big change; it goes through the car. Other than that, the reg­u­la­tion changes are sig­nif­i­cant but not huge. So, in that sense, the car will be an evo­lu­tion, it will bear a fam­ily resem­blance to the RB5, RB6, RB7 lin­eage. It’s just a mat­ter of push­ing on, as always. As Pat men­tioned ear­lier, the fact is that you don’t know how much per­for­mance your com­peti­tors are going to find over the win­ter, so it’s get your heads down and get on with it, and you find out where you are come the first race.

Q: (Joris Fior­iti – Agence France Presse) To Paddy and Adrian, what do Jen­son But­ton and Sebas­t­ian Vet­tel have that their team-mates don’t have, whether it’s pos­i­tive or neg­a­tive? What extra thing do they bring to the team?
AN: One’s Eng­lish, one’s Ger­man, I guess. I don’t know, how you can answer that? I can’t answer for Paddy, obvi­ously, but I think for Sebas­t­ian, this year, he’s obvi­ously dri­ving with great con­fi­dence on the back of his cham­pi­onship from last year. I think impor­tantly, the change to Pirelli tyres has taken Mark longer than Sebas­t­ian to under­stand; how best to use those tyres. In truth, you can have this per­cep­tion that the dif­fer­ence is big; it doesn’t take much of a swing for things to change, so while Sebas­t­ian has clearly had a much stronger run than Mark this year, quite often the dif­fer­ence in the race has been quite small but the results have been dif­fer­ent enough that the points stand­ing is where it is.
PL: Between our two dri­vers, they are very dif­fer­ent per­son­al­i­ties, they have dif­fer­ent styles in the car, but they are both great cham­pi­ons and both dri­ving very well and at sim­i­lar pace. I think that’s great for us; they both give good feed­back but com­pli­men­tary, so it works well.

Q: (Joris Fior­iti – Agence France Presse) If one is deeper in his analy­sis of the car, there must be dif­fer­ences in some ways.
PL: I think it’s a bit like you see in races. Lewis has a very aggres­sive style, he can go straight out there and find the limit imme­di­ately. Jen­son will work up to that point more sub­tly to that point but I think that what’s great is that you come to qual­i­fy­ing and both guys will go out and deliver the lap. It’s just a slightly dif­fer­ent way that they do their homework.

Q: (Gary Meenaghan – The National) Adrian, in two years of rac­ing in Abu Dhabi, Sebas­t­ian is the only per­son to have won there. What is it about the Yas Marina cir­cuit that suits Red Bull and Sebas­t­ian?
AN: Crikey, I don’t know is the hon­est answer to that. We have had a good run there for the last two years but I’m not sure there’s any par­tic­u­lar fea­ture of the cir­cuit that makes it well-suited to Sebas­t­ian and the car. Can’t answer that I’m afraid.

Q: (Dieter Rencken – The Cit­i­zen) Paddy, fol­low­ing on your DRS com­ments ear­lier on, would you like to see DRS use being totally free through­out the week­end, includ­ing the race?
PL: I think not, no. The whole point of it was to improve the over­tak­ing in the race. I don’t think we want to make over­tak­ing triv­ial. It’s a fine bal­ance, I think it’s one that’s set at the moment by the FIA in their selec­tion of the zone length and the num­ber of zones, and I think that works well. They need to keep tun­ing it but if you just made it com­pletely free in the race, I really think that you would make it far too easy and that would go the other extreme in terms of detract­ing from the spectacle.

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