PART TWO: TEAM
REPRESENTATIVES – Jonathan NEALE (McLaren), Gene HAAS (Haas), Franz TOST
(Toro Rosso)
PRESS CONFERENCE
Q: Jonathan, can we start with you? P11 and P12 in free practice and Jenson
Button, not having sat in a Formula One car for six months or something is
three one hundredths of a second slower than Stoffel Vandoorne. Tell us
about your day?
Jonathan NEALE: Yeah, it’s been a good day for us. We’ve run problem-free,
which is nice. Everything that we brought in terms of changes to the car
seem to be OK, from what I know, we’re still crunching some of the data.
There’s certainly some more lap time to come. I think the drivers are some
way off the limit at the moment. It was nice to see some confidence in
Stoffel and rookie JB back in the car is good, yeah.
Q: So it’s the race of two worlds you’re calling it this weekend. It’s going
pretty well so far for Fernando Alonso starting fifth on the grid for the
Indianapolis 500. But here in Monaco the pressure is kind of on Jenson and
Stoffel a bit after Sauber got those points in Spain. You don’t want to be
sitting there in P10 with zero points for much longer, so you’ve got to turn
this into some points haven’t you?
JN: That would always be the aim, but looking at a couple of points here or
there, or whether it’s P10 of P9, yes, it’s a matter of fact but our issues
are larger than that. We came off P6 at the end of last year, should have
made a step forward and didn’t and that’s far and away the biggest issue,
which is what we’re working on. Without being too discounting about it,
we’re taking those issues much more seriously than that. But here, where
anything can happen and with a car where perhaps some of the power unit
plays less of a determining role, it’s exciting to see what we can do.
Q: So finally, what is the latest on Honda’s recovery strategy? When will
see a significant step in performance and reliability from them?
JN: I think that’s something that’s better addressed by Honda actually.
Let’s see what happens; let them talk about their plans.
Q: Gene, coming to you, your second Monaco Grand Prix as a Formula One team
boss. How have you analysed the value of your presence in Formula One to
your business, as obviously that’s why you came in? And what do you make of
the new owners of Formula One and their push to get a second US Grand Prix
and maybe even more than that?
Gene HAAS: Well, I think the new owners are doing everything correctly that
I see. They’ve visited us several times in our hospitality suite, so they’re
making an effort to find out what we think is important and ask our opinion.
They seem to have lots of ideas. Some of them are becoming more evident,
small ones, more access to video clips and things. I think all of that is
very, very positive. As far as the relationship to my business, it’s given
us an impact, a notoriety. It’s a premium product and we associate a premium
machine tool with a premium product, so I think that’s good. It’s a
long-term strategy. We are more here to learn than to race at the moment. As
we go forward… it’s a process. I’m very happy where we are right now. I
don’t really know what the future holds, but right now we're content.
Q: Now a bit like Jonathan, you’re also racing in two worlds, you’re at
Charlotte this weekend with your NASCAR team. There’s clearly a lot of focus
on Indianapolis as well, so what do you think of Fernando Alonso’s
performance so far on his first experience on an oval? You’re very
experienced with ovals, so you’re probably best qualified to judge how
impressive his performance has been so far.
GH: Well, I can’t speak in terms of what a race car driver would think about
Indy, but I do know that it’s a very, very nerve-racking type of drive.
You’re basically talking 230mph on the straightaways and you slow down to
225mph in the turns. Most Formula One driver don’t experience that, with
very little grip. The way you set up the cars is you put a lot of grip in
there and then they keep removing it until the driver just can’t stand it
anymore, because he thinks he’s going to hit the wall. So it’s an
incremental process very unlike what you would find in Formula One. That
kind of racing I think is different. One driver once explained it as like
driving on black ice. Trying to control a car that’s on the verge of
spinning out all of the time is not easy to do. I think it’s great. I think
everybody wants to see how a Formula One driver does in Indy, just as much
as they would like to see NASCAR drivers in Formula One.
Q: Franz, P4 and P5 today in free practice, out on the track the car looks
nice and supple. Are you feeling optimistic this weekend?
Franz TOST: Yeah, I think we have a very competitive package together. The
car works well. We found a really good set-up here for Monaco. Both drivers
like Monaco, they’re also experienced and I hope that we can repeat this
performance on Saturday as well as on Sunday because this is what counts.
Q: Obviously it comes off the back of a double points finish in Spain but it
looks like you could still do with a bit more horsepower; when do you expect
some more from the Renault upgrade coming along?
FT: We will see. Renault is making some small steps. First of all, they have
to get everything under control from the reliability side. We must not
forget that Renault came up with a completely new design of an engine and
this takes time. We all know that the power unit now is very very
complicated and I’m convinced that within the second half of the season they
will provide us with a very good, powerful engine. I must say that so far we
are quite happy with the performance with Renault.
Q: So there’s no frustration there, because obviously you went from last
year having an old spec engine that wasn’t going to develop and you’ve gone
to something you thought was going to be... there’s no sense of frustration
here, you can wait to the second half of the season can you?
FT: No, there’s no frustration. It always depends where you are coming from.
Last year we had a one year-old engine and now we are even happy to have
this year’s engine and as I just mentioned before, I’m convinced that
Renault will do the steps forward which they promised.
QUESTIONS FROM THE FLOOR
Q: (Peter Farkas – Auto Motor) Jonathan, could you please share some details
of how well Jenson has settled back into the rhythm and how different he
found the car from last year’s car and what did he say after the first few
laps?
JN: Great questions. So I think the... Jenson elected not to do the test
after Bahrain because he was confident enough in the simulation tools. I
think as well the car is still and was then developing quite quickly so
whatever he got into and adjusted to was subsequently going to be different
again by the time we got to Monaco. So he’s been in and... you know,
Jenson’s been with us for some time now so we know the pattern, the rhythm
and how he likes to set himself and the car up, so we’ve had several
simulator sessions, seat fits, system checks, just sort of running through
the basics. He’s a World Champion, so we don’t need to do that much so that
feel and that competitiveness is still there. He’s a relaxed individual
until you get him in the car, put somebody next to him who’s close in terms
of speed and then the internal competition starts and that’s fun for the
garage as well as for the fans. In terms of from last year to this year, of
course the cars are wider but everybody apart from one this morning was off
the barriers. I think that there’s still quite a bit to come from both
drivers and from the car but there’s so much more downforce this year
compared to last year so the brake points are all completely different. But
as he said before he came in, he’s having fun and as he said it’s fun to be
in the car. He was going to be with us but it’s a lot more fun driving than
just sitting on the side.
Q: (Dan Knutson – Auto Action and Speedsport) Gene, towards the end of last
season, you jokingly said that if you had known how difficult F1 was you
might not have entered. The team knows the ropes a lot better now, but is it
a case of actually being more difficult because the more you know, the more
you realise what a challenge it is?
GH: Yes, I really didn’t know the depth of the technical challenges in
Formula One and probably like most of the fans, they really don’t know how
complex these cars are but it’s intriguing, it’s fun to get involved in it.
We have great partners and I think we’re doing OK. We were a little bit
lucky last year and now our luck has got more normal, it’s more normal luck
that you typically have in racing so it’s a challenge. It’s very hard
competing against some of these... all these teams, they’re all very good at
what they do. We’re weak in areas like tyre strategy and we’re a little weak
in our pit areas. We get caught behind cars that cost us positions. All
these ten little things that all add up to a tenth of a second. That’s
really where we lose a lot of time and I think that as we develop, we get
better at that.
Q: (Silvia Arias – Parabrisas) For Mr Jonathan Neale: is there any
possibility that we’re going to see Jenson next year if Fernando retires at
the end of the year?
JN: I think that’s really a question for Jenson. I think in the recent
media, Jenson’s been saying that this is a one-off. It’s a question for
Jenson. In terms of speculating about what he feels at the end of the
season, or what might happen to Fernando, maybe it’s just that, it’s
speculation.
Q: (Dieter Rencken – Racing Lines) There have been suggestions from Liberty
that they’re going to move away from a fixed-term contract, Concorde-type
agreement into an open-ended partnership or constitution, possibly even with
equitable revenue distribution. How do you feel about this and how will this
impact on your teams?
FT: If we get more money I’m more than fine.
GH: I understand that the new owners are typically going to do what new
owners do: go out and raise revenue and cut costs and that’s exactly what
they’ll do and since we’re on the cost side of it, it’s a little
nerve-wracking what they have in mind. On the other hand, F1 is kind of a
crown jewel so maybe they’ll tread lightly and everything will work itself
out.
JN: Yeah, I think it’s a question of... if you look back over 15 or 20 years
then Formula One as an investment, as an entity, has done very well for
itself, but what got us here won’t get us there. The world is changing, the
business is changing, the nature of partnerships, commerciality is changing
and I think for some time a number of us, yourself included Dieter, have
looked at the grid: well how many sustainable business models are there, in
terms of the teams’ structure, forget the FOM side of things, just the teams
structure? We know that there have been pressures in that sustainability. To
your point about whether some read baseline of the cost structure or the
income line grows as has been said by my colleagues here, then I think it’s
a question of looking at the package as a whole and I think that’s what the
new owners are doing which I think is really exciting. I think they’ve got
the right people – by the looks of it – around the table but if Formula One
does what Formula One has historically done, which is: see the big picture
and then take a very narrow fix and do a one thing and then wonder why the
consequences over here were not what was expected, then I think it will be
extremely difficult and very challenging but it looks to me like the whole
thing has been thought out and we’ll see what gets put to us. But we’re
open-minded and I think generally supportive of the way that the Liberty
guys and the new owners are going because we recognise that what has been
has had its time I think.
Q: (Dieter Rencken – Racing Lines) Gene, that comment of yours that what
they have in mind is nerve-wracking – sorry, could you expand on that
please, it’s rather an intriguing comment you made?
GH: You know most savvy businessmen in the US are public companies and it’s
bottom line, let’s face it, it is very much to it but since we’re the
newcomers in this business, our revenue stream from Formula One is nothing
so anything we get will be greatly appreciated but I think we just have to
be very very careful in how you redistribute the wealth because there are
some teams at the top that have spent fifty years doing this, that have
earned some entitlement to how the costs are distributed. I’m not saying
that the teams at the bottom don’t deserve more but I’m still saying teams
at the top deserve more. You can’t just arbitrarily redistribute that
because quite frankly winning races should come with rewards and it should
not be a socialistic type structure. Other than that, everything else is
open to negotiation but I think in racing, even in NASCAR we’re having
struggles with that. The team owners are typically on the bottom rung of the
income stream and they’re struggling - as viewership goes down, sponsors go
down. It’s been very very difficult in NASCAR and I think to some degree
that teams that rely on sponsorship are starting to find it’s very very
difficult to attract a major sponsor. A $25m sponsor is a huge sponsor.
Today, that is practically non-existent. Most of the sponsors – at least I
know from NASCAR, they’re more in the $5m to $10m range and you have to have
multiple sponsors on your cars at different races. There’s some adaptability
to that but at the same time there’s a lot of demand from media, so how that
money gets redistributed seems to be the question but unfortunately the
teams don’t have a real strong position there to speak up about how it will
get distributed because we don’t own Formula One.
Q: (Peter Farkas – Auto Motor) Sorry, this is more of a technical question
maybe but are this year’s tyres even more tricky to manage than last year’s,
because they were supposed to be a bit easier to manage but there are lots
of complaints, from team to team, that they are very hard to get into the
temperature window? Is it just a new challenge and it’s alright or it’s a
bit like playing roulette, it’s too arbitrary?
JN: I don’t think it’s... it’s easy to get it wrong but I don’t think it’s
the tyre issue. We don’t find it particularly challenging. Sometimes when
we’ve brought a harder compound – I mean the medium compound in Barcelona,
on the nature of that tarmac was a bit trickier to get to work but I don’t
think the tyres are a big or detrimental story to Formula One this year. I
think the racing’s been good, I think the general direction of the technical
regulations in introducing more downforce was the right thing to do and
closing up the gap on the power unit manufacturers... I think that’s been
the... it’s still the dominant stories. I don’t think tyres are an issue for
us.
FT: The tyres are a challenge, to understand them, how they work, but it’s
good for the engineers as well as for the drivers to find out in which
window they can get their earliest peak and they can get the most out of it.
But in motor sports they have to understand the tyre because it’s a
performance differentiator and therefore I can only say positive (things)
about Pirelli because in my opinion they do a good job and today I saw the
same for all the teams and we have to find the best possible solution and
get the most out of it. And there are always complaints; either they are too
soft or they are too hard or this or that. Forget it, they should sit in the
car and should push. That’s it.
GH: Well, in Barcelona, when the safety car came out, we came in and we went
on the medium tyres which were about a second slower than the softs and we
stayed way too long on the medium tyres and we feel that cost us a chance at
some points. We had done some degradation testing in the pre-practices but
we didn’t get enough time on them, we only got like five or ten laps but if
we had a better tyre strategy we would have stayed out on the mediums a very
short time. The tyres do have a lot of differences between the different
ones that are available and you have to know how to gauge that in order to
make time. As much as the tyres are very good, tyre strategy is key. |