TEAM REPRESENTATIVES – Claire WILLIAMS
(Williams), Christian HORNER (Red Bull Racing), Cyril ABITEBOUL (Renault),
Zak BROWN (McLaren), Andrew GREEN (Racing Point)
PRESS CONFERENCE
Q: Following the passing of three-time Formula
One World Champion Niki Lauda this week, we asked all of the drivers
yesterday for their memories and thoughts of Niki. We’d like to start in the
same fashion with you today please. Cyril, is we could start with you: your
thoughts and memories of Niki?
Cyril ABITEBOUL: It’s another sad news for the Formula One community.
Frankly, I had not a lot of interaction with Niki, but clearly he was one of
the role models that form our youth and the reason we are admiring Formula
One – for the fantastic animal that you come across in life. He was a model
of resilience. He was taking the fighting spirit very, very hard and
impressive what he managed to do over his career. Any meeting with him was
kind of fun. You never knew what could happen. He will be another person
badly missed in Formula One.
Christian?
Christian HORNER: It’s a huge loss for Formula One - the whole paddock.
Obviously for Mercedes where he was so active as well. I think it was a
shock for everyone. Obviously he’s not been in great health for the last
pretty much 12 months. He was an iconic person. What he achieved in the
sport was phenomenal. Just the most remarkable story. You only have to watch
the movie, which I think is a pretty decent representation of actually what
happened and the fight back that he had, which obviously happened prior to
my really understanding of who he was. When I really came across him, he was
working as a commentator, quite an outspoken commentator at that time, and
he managed to where all these hats, commentating for RTL, running the
Mercedes team as their chairman. He was just a larger than life character,
obviously as an Austrian, and us an Austrian team, he spent a lot of time
with us, particularly Helmut Marko, a very close friend of his, as they
pretty much had grown up together. We’ll certainly miss the breakfast where
he would come, pretty much every morning and Helmut and he would be like the
two old guys in the Muppet Show, Waldorf and Statler I think it was, and
they’d basically be commenting on all aspects of life, none of what I’m
going to repeat here, that’s for sure – but his openness, his sense of
humour, his ability to say “how did you screw that up?” something “was
rubbish” – or complement you when you’d done well. He was a great guy, a
great personality and he’ll be very, very sadly missed.
Claire, your thoughts?
Clair WILLIAMS: I obviously had the pleasure of knowing Niki through our
relationship with Mercedes. I can’t profess to knowing him extremely well
but everything that he’s achieved in motorsport is extraordinary and, as
Christian said, watching that film really demonstrates exactly the kind of
character that he was. Latterly, working with him in the Strategy Group
meetings, he was always the voice of reason. When Niki talked, people
listened. Personally, we always had a bit of a joke about my single status.
I think I probably wouldn’t have got married as quickly as I have if Niki
wasn’t pressuring my husband into proposing – so that will always be a nice
memory for me. The sport has lost an icon, hasn’t it. Our thoughts go out to
his family.
Zak?
Zak BROWN: Yes, I echo what everyone has said before me. He was an absolute
legend of the sport. A loss for all of us. Never met anyone who didn’t like
Niki. He was a real likeable guy, a real racer, had a strong opinion and
when you look at what he came back from , that’s a real inspiration. I think
not many would have been as brave as he was – not only to come back, but to
go on, win World Championships. He won his last World Championship with
McLaren. So, a lot of people in our factory, Mansour Ojjeh, one of our
owners, were was super-close to Niki, so it feels like we lost a member of
our family and, of course, the whole racing community has. Just wish his
family the best and just grateful to have the fond memories here in Formula
One forever.
Andy?
Andrew GREEN: Unfortunately I never had the honour to work with Niki. He was
the background to my youth when I was watching Formula One. He was a big
part of it. Some very big images from back then, and part of why I got into
the sport. What he did from then until now is just incredible. He’s a real
icon and will be sorely missed.
Q: We’ll now turn our focus to this current season. Christian, we’ll start
with you. For Red Bull it’s been a consistent start to the year. Max
Verstappen in the top four at every race and this is usually a race that you
target victory at. After the way FP1 has gone, is that a realistic target
for you again this weekend?
CH: I think it’s been a strong start to the year after the engine change
over the winter. I think we’ve been very consistent, we’ve had two podium
positions, we’ve finished in fourth place every other grand prix. Obviously,
having introduced some upgrades in Barcelona, you ought to try to optimise
those and Monte Carlos has always represented a track that we’ve performed
well at. We’ve had an encouraging first practice but I think having seen
Mercedes’ performance, particularly in the slow speed sector of Barcelona,
they are absolutely the stand-out favourites for this event, so if we can
get anywhere near them, and put a little bit of pressure on that, that would
certainly be our target going in to the weekend.
Q: Cyril, you’ve got last year’s Monaco Grand Prix winner driving for you
this season – but currently sitting eighth in the Constructors’
Championship. Were you expecting to be a little bit higher at this stage of
the season?
CA: Yeah, of course, I think you can even say that it’s not the season start
that we wanted, that we were ambitioning working for and advertised. It
takes clearly a reaction from all of us. In my opinion obviously there has
been a collection of issues, not excuse, but issues over the first five
races that do not reflect the ambition, the level of our drivers, the level
of the team. So it’s up to us to react and come up with clear answers to the
different issues. We hope to see those answers starting to kick off with
this weekend. Indeed, we have last year’s grand prix winner. It just creates
another obligation to come up with the best possible car at this point of
our journey.
Q: Claire, the start to the season probably not gone the way Williams would
have envisaged either – but since the start of the year you’ve had better
qualifying performance in Barcelona and then the test, working on some new
ideas. Do you feel like there are shoots of recovery now? Are you starting
that rebuilding process?
CW: Yeah, you say it wasn't the start to the season that we envisaged – but
I think we anticipated what was coming. Yeah, I definitely feel that we can
see some light at the end of the tunnel now and I think probably just from
the time sheets and the last race in Barcelona, we demonstrated that we are
closing that gap. It may be slow but we all know that it takes time to bring
performance to your car. There’s definitely a lot of good work going on back
at the factory that people may not necessarily be seeing yet. The aero team
are doing a great job finding performance in the tunnel and we’re going to
be bringing that to races over the coming weeks and months with a package
coming mid-way through the season that we will hope will bring some
significant performance to us. Yes, there are definitely signs of
improvement. I think there’s a certain positivity in the team at the moment.
Morale is still pretty good, and that’s all we can ask of everyone: just
fighting hard, not giving up and keep on brining performance to the car.
Q: And Zak. I’m sure you’ll be facing questions about last weekend’s events
in Indianapolis from the floor but focusing on Formula One right now,
McLaren actually extended its advantage in fourth in the Constructors’
Championship in Barcelona. Would you say that’s actually ahead of
expectations for this season?
ZB: It’s early in the season and the midfield is so tight, I think the swing
can swing at any one race. We’re pleased that we’re sitting forth in the
Championship. We think that’s realistically, on our road to recovery, about
as much as we’re going to be able to realistically achieve. So we will fight
hard to retain that position, and those behind us are going to fight hard,
of course, to knock us out of fourth, and we’ve got a long way to go, so I
think anything can happen – but I’m really pleased with all the effort
everyone at McLaren has put together. We had a better winter testing, and
certainly have built a better race car. Drivers are doing an excellent job,
we’re quick on pit stops now, so you can feel the team’s coming together. We
have Andreas Seidl now and James Key who’ve joined, so I feel I’ve got all
the right players on the field, so to speak and now we just need to put our
head down and execute.
Q: Andrew, if we look at Racing Point, that’s one of the teams looking to
close down McLaren. You introduced a new upgrade package in Barcelona – but
it looked like a tough weekend for you. So, what worked with the update and
what still needs to be optimised?
AG: Yeah, we were sort-of anticipating Barcelona was going to be a tough
race for us. It has been, it’s been part of the DNA of the car for while,
which is something we’re actively working on back at the factory. From what
we see the upgrades did what they were supposed to do. I think we were quite
content. We’ve got a route forwards and the car is evolving quite quickly
and it will do over the next half a dozen races. We think we’ve got a good
direction to go in – it just takes time. Like Clare said: you can’t change
cars overnight, these things do take some time to evolve in the factory and
come to the track. We’re happy with the route we’re going in. Are we happy
with where we are now? No. But we can see that we’re going in the right
direction.
QUESTIONS FROM THE FLOOR
Q: (Scott Mitchell – Autosport) Claire, in the build-up to this week you
announced Jamie Chadwick as a development driver. You explained that it will
involve simulator responsibilities to begin with. Is there a plan – or a
hope – to give her on-track opportunities or the opportunity for that
partnership to maybe evolve in the future?
CW: Like you say, we’re delighted that Jamie’s joined the team. She’s
obviously part of the W Series Championship this year. She won the first
event and then she had a good run in Zolder last weekend. We announced her
on Monday, she’s going to be doing simulator work, as you said. Full
immersion in the factory, working with the engineers to support her campaign
this year and to just help… well it all goes to promoting women in
motorsport. Doing this for her is hopefully going to elevate her
competitiveness. At the moment it is reserved to simulator work and then
coming to a few races with us to see the team trackside and how we operate
in F1. There are no plans at the moment to put her in an F1 car at this
stage.
Q: (Oliver Brown – The Telegraph) Question for Zak. The Indy 500. You gave a
fairly remarkable interview to the Associated Press about the full reasons
behind Fernando’s failure to qualify. I just wonder, how embarrassing has
this episode been and how do you explain how a company of McLaren’s
sophistication can make these kinds of errors.
ZB: I’ve spoken a lot about Indy Car, as you pointed out, and I think this
is a Formula One environment, I have my Formula One shirt on, so I prefer to
talk about Formula One. To answer your question, we got it wrong and I
thought it was important to be transparent and open as much as sometimes the
truth hurts. I think the industry isn’t necessarily that open, that often.
And we got it wrong and I’m responsible for that. I felt I needed to share
with everyone. There’s of course little stories behind each of those
individual issues and how they transpired but y’know, we didn’t execute and
therefore we didn't qualify for the Indy 500. It’s happened to the best of
them before and we learned a lot. I was watching this morning, a little
tribute to Niki and, when he grabbed his Laureus award, talked about how he
learned more from losing, which is what made him a winner, so we’ll dust
ourselves off. We’re racers. It was a big, public failure. I wanted to
communicate what happened. Yeah, it’s embarrassing. It’s not to the McLaren
standard. It’s not acceptable – but it happened and we’re going to learn
from it and we’ll come back stronger.
Q: (Dieter Rencken – Racing Lines/racefans.net) A question for all of you.
Give or take a week we’re a month away from Formula One’s self-imposed
deadline on the regulation changes for 2021. Given the magnitude of
everything that’s required – governance, commercial, sporting, technical etc
– can it actually get done in time?
Q: Shall we work our way along the line with that one, starting with Cyril?
CA: Thank you! It’s vast question and the usual question. Will we have a
signed contract by FIA, Formula One and all 10 teams by end of June or
mid-June for the World Motor Council? No, obviously no. But in my opinion
there has been a lot of groundwork already covered. I think it’s all about
trying to agree what will be the key principles for 2021, from a commercial
perspective, financial perspective, the key principles on the technical side
and the sporting side. And in my opinion we are probably 80% or 90% from
that point, from that milestone, so with enough faith and enough goodwill
from all participants and probably a bit of a push from the key
stakeholders, FIA and Formula One, there is no reason why something cannot
be presented at the World Motor Sport Council that will be advanced enough
to give useful guidelines for the remainder of the year, so that we have a
complete set of guidelines for the end of the year. That’s my opinion,
obviously, but there is still some work to cover.
Q: Christian?
CH: I didn’t understand any of that.
CA: We are not partners anymore. You can’t make fun of me anymore. It’s not
part of the contract anymore!
CH: But it’s still enjoyable. Sorry, what was you question about?
Regulations coming out. Look I’m sure something is going to be presented. It
will probably nowhere near what actually gets signed. I’m sure the
regulations will change and evolve. Something will come out in June, it will
change in September, October, probably in November, and yeah, there’s plenty
of ground to cover, but there is a watershed where something will be put in
front of us fairly shortly and then the fun really begins.
Q: Claire, is June realistic?
CW: I’m going to be really boring now after that, aren’t I? Clearly we’re
getting close to ’21. When we first started these negotiations, it was a
long time ago and we’re now at that point where we need to have that full
set of regulations so that we can plan and prepare out businesses for that
season. As Christian says, I’m sure there are going to be some further
negotiations after that point. For a team in our position clearly when it
comes top the technical regulations we wouldn’t want too much movement after
that. People are going to start working on those, people are already
working, and we don’t need to be wasting resources with a huge change
subsequent to the issuance of the first draft. I don’t think there’s much
choice. We have to get those regulations out and so I believe it should be
done and I’m sure it can be done.
Q: And Zak?
ZB: I agree with everything that I’ve head. I don’t believe we’ll get it
done in June and it will play out over the second half of the year and we’ll
get there and racing will go on.
Q: And Andy?
AG: I can only speak from a technical aspect, but I know that the FIA and F1
have done a huge amount of work in the background on this. We were exposed
to some of it last week in a technical working group meeting. We could see
that it’s quite well evolved. It’s going to need some tidying up for sure.
We have meetings planned from now until the end of the year, which is where
we all anticipate it’s going to go to. It’s a significant set of changes,
bit like I said, they have done a huge amount of work in the background and
I think we can get there.
Q: (Sam Collins – Racecar Engineering) Predictably, another question on
regulations, but this time the 2025 power unit regulations, which we hear
will be completely different to what we have now. I’d like to ask the whole
panel this, as there are some different opinions on this, what you’d like to
see in the new power unit for 2025, what technologies and what things are
good and what things are bad?
Q: We’ll reverse the order then and start with technical thoughts first.
AG: What a question: 2025! I think what we have now is an incredible piece
of engineering in the back of the car. But it could just be too incredible.
I think what we have is potentially something where the technology bar of
the power unit is just way too high and I think I would like to see
something that is just slightly simpler. That’s my view. I think I’d never
say no to more horsepower. I think the sport can’t have enough horsepower.
We need to make the cars harder to drive. I think more power; a simpler
power unit. That’s where I would be going.
Q: Zak, your thoughts?
ZB: More power would be great. Less expensive would be outstanding.
CA: There is the message!
ZB: And I don’t know that it’s achievable but if we could have some
diversity in the engine itself and not be limited to a certain amount of
cylinders, things of that nature, I think would maybe spice up the show. But
whether that’s achievable or not… We don’t build engines, so Cyril is best
to answer whether a scenario like that would be feasible.
Q: Claire, your thoughts on 2025?
CW: Again, at Williams we don’t build engines and I’m certainly not an
engineer who is educated enough to give you a sensible answer. But from our
perspective, as Zak says, something that is cost-efficient, environmentally
appropriate and loud. Noisy would be nice.
Q: And Christian?
CH: Emotionally, a normally-aspirated, high-revving V10 or V12 engine would
be a wonderful thing to have back in Formula One, but unfortunately I think
they’re rather outdated now. I think as Andy was saying, the technology in
these engines is phenomenal. We’ve now got a period of stability with the
engines until 2023 I think or 2024, so it’s important that Formula One makes
the right decision for the future. Obviously the automotive sector is moving
an awful lot at the moment and what technologies are going to relevant then?
Because when that engine comes in in 2025 that’s going to have to be for a
5-10- year period, so we’re actually talking up to 2035, which is a long way
down the pipelines. The romantic in me says go back – loud, noise, high
revs, normally aspirated.
Q: And Cyril, from a power unit supplier point of view?
CA: The romantic in me would say the same thing, but obviously in 2025 the
world will be different, that’s for sure. Electrification will be a profound
trend, so it’s not going to go away. In my opinion we need to look at the
next couple of years to form an opinion regarding MGU-H road relevance,
because it’s clearly a component that was introduced for that purpose. Right
now, we don’t’ see any application on road cars but it may come. It may
actually be in the pipeline of some manufacturers, so we need to be careful
not to be basically in reverse in that respect. And then diversity of
technology would be great but we need to be careful not to open up the field
and create some discrepancy. One thing that might be interesting that starts
to be discussed is not necessarily not the next generation of engine but the
next generation of fuel, because we still believe that Formula One is about
hybrid technology, not full electric, for a number of reasons. Clearly we
need more power and sustainable power and long races, but there will be new
forms of fuel coming up in the next few years, whether you are talking about
more bio-fuel, so a different composition, or even synthesis fuel, coming
from non-fossil sources, that could be attractive and that would require new
development. So, probably the way forwards. Less exciting, obviously, than a
very high-revving, normally-aspirated engine, but still probably the way
forward if we want to be relevant, not just to car makers, but to society.
Q: (Jerome Pugmire – Associated Press) A question for Zak. Just picking up
on what you said earlier about the need for transparency and coming forward
with the reasons for what happened. Is the motivation behind that because
fans are owed those explanations or more the sense that the people who did
not do their job properly need to face up to that or is it a combination of
both that prompts that?
ZB: No, I think anyone that maybe didn’t get the job done, you have a
private conversation with them. I don’t think that would be ever be
appropriate to discuss in an open forum, which is why names in a variety of
areas were mentioned, and that was about being transparent with our fans and
partners and not glossing over something that was not as minor miss but was
a major miss. I felt obligated to explain that to the world and the best way
to do that was via the media, to get the message out, and I’m glad we did
it.
Q: (Julien Billotte – Auto Hebdo) – A question for whoever would like to
answer. There was some hope at the start of the season that the new
regulations, the 2019 regulations, could shake things up a bit in terms of
the pecking order, and here we are five races in, Mercedes is winning
everything and the top three are miles ahead of the midfield. What makes you
confident that 2021 can be the game changer that Formula 1 probably needs?
Q: It was whoever wants to answer and you all look delighted to jump in.
Christian, why don’t you start?
CH: Thank you very much. Look, the regulation change this year; the outcome
was rather predictable unfortunately and it’s up to us, the teams competing
against Mercedes to close that gap down. I think for 2021 it’s a clean sheet
of paper, it will be a big regulation change and I think one of the things
that we debated is that you need to be a little bit careful, because if you
release very early regulations then quite the teams that have more resource
quite simply put that resource earlier on than the smaller teams. So it’s
about finding that balance of when is the right time for full regulations to
be released. And I think the cars will be a lot simpler. Inevitably teams
will get it right and teams will get it wrong. But hopefully the concept of
what they are looking at should put more inference on the driver to be a
bigger variable than he or she currently can be. And that’s what Formula One
desperately needs. It needs the drivers very much to be the stars, to be
modern day chariot racers and that we have wheel-to-wheel, exciting, and to
a degree, unpredictable racing, because serial winning like we have at the
moment, the teams in many respects are getting too good at predicting the
outcome of a weekend with the updates they introduce. Hats off to Mercedes,
they’ve done a better job than anybody to be in the position they are, but
hopefully the technical regulations will be the biggest driver to shuffle
that around and change that, and hopefully introduce more variance.
Q: Claire, for a team playing catch-up at the moment, does the late release
of regulations do you think benefit you and equalise things a little bit
across the field?
CW: Yeah, as Christian said, if we can have those regulations released
slightly later then clearly for a team like ours, then we’re not going to be
battling as a team like Christian’s or Toto and Ferrari, who can all put so
much resource across three programmes. For a team like ours, it’s much
harder to do that but it’s just more about having clarity on when those
regulations come out for us and to make sure that those regulations are
defined as when they come out rather than people tinkering with them in the
TWG or whatever and then there’s a second draft to them. We just need them
as soon as possible but not too soon so that people can’t put an arms race
against them.
Q: Zak?
ZB: Well, yeah, I would agree with what I’ve heard the additional add I
would have is it’s going to come along with the budget cap so not only would
the rules be very different, there also won’t hopefully be unlimited budgets
to be able to put against developing the new car. As far as timing, coming
out, I think later the better but they have such great resources, the teams
at the front, that they will just have the ability to push out more boats in
more directions over a shorter period of time so I think the technical
rules, tied to the budget cap is what’s going to maybe drive some change in
the sport.
Q: Andy, from a technical point of view does it feel like a big opportunity?
AG: Potentially. I think the technical regulations definitely focused on
allowing cars to follow more closely, I think that’s quite clear, but I
think, with every season there’ll always be teams that do a better job than
the others so there’s always going to be a quicker team and a slower team
and the problem is, you line those teams up and that’s the order on Sunday
afternoon and I think you’re going to get the same result so I think that
somewhere along the line, there needs to be a look at the sporting aspect as
well as just the technical side, otherwise we’re just going to end up with
cars that can follow each other but they’re going to follow each other in a
procession.
Q: And Cyril?
CA: The only thing I would say is that we basically need to do the opposite
of what’s been done this year. I don’t think the intent of this year was
really to change the pecking order; it could have been a secondary benefit
but this year it was a superficial change, late and we need a drastic change
early if we want to change things, in my opinion.
Q: (Stuart Codling – F1 Racing) Claire, right at the top of the press
conference you said you had a big development step coming in the next few
months. Now, bearing in mind what you’ve already just said about the 2021
regulations, what is the Williams development road map over the next few
months? How far do you take development of the current car? When do you
start looking at 2020? Does 2020 in effect become a write-off as you start
thinking about 2021?
CW: No, nothing is a write-off at Williams, ever. It never has been and it
never would be, regardless of where we are. It’s just not our mindset a
Williams. We don’t write a season off just because we aren’t doing well. For
us, at the moment, we’re really looking at ’19 and ’20 very much as almost
two seasons, where it’s just evolution and development and we’ve just got to
keep bringing performance at each and every race, and as I said earlier,
we’ve definitely seen that we’ve done that, we’re closing the gap to the
ninth-placed team and we’ve got to keep doing that as the season progresses
and we’re looking at obviously what 2020 looks like from a development
perspective, what we’re going to be focusing our resources and attention on,
to make sure that we certainly do a whole lot better job next year for us.
And then again, we’ve got to look at ’21 and make sure we’ve got the right
resources in place and the focus in place to take advantage of that
situation. Clearly, as everyone knows and have talked about a lot, ’21 could
be a really great opportunity for us with the cost cap that’s coming and
with whole new technical regulations.
Q: (Daniel Horvath – Racing Line) Zak, Nyck de Vries is no longer part of
the McLaren Junior programme. Could you tell us what was behind this
decision?
ZB: Well, we’ve got our junior drivers, junior driver and Sergio and we’ve
got two very young – well, one very young Lando Norris and Carlos Sainz who
we’re extremely happy with and we don’t see the need, at this point, to
stack up some drivers and then run into a situation where you don’t have a
home for them, so we felt that it was best – because we felt it would be
highly unlikely he would end up in a McLaren, given our current driver
situation – that he would be a free agent to be able to drive for other
teams because often, when a Junior driver is under a contract that then
deters other teams from taking them and then ultimately can end up sometimes
hurting their career which we don’t think is the right thing to do.
Q: (Louis Dekker – NOS) Christian, do you agree that this is your best
chance to beat Mercedes and is Max ready for redemption in Monaco after
difficult years?
CH: Well Max’s track record here has been a tricky one and I think
particularly last year, obviously, was a tough weekend for him. We had
promising pace in the first session. I think Mercedes is a mighty machine
this year but Max has been in the form of his life, he’s driving incredibly
well and it probably does represent our best chance since the beginning of
the year to at least get close to them and hopefully put them under a little
bit of pressure. Yeah, hopefully we can build on the first session and
through the rest of the weekend.
Q: (Luke Smith – Crash.net) Zak, how much did last week’s failure to qualify
for Indy impact your relationship with Fernando Alonso with McLaren? And how
involved are you in helping outline Fernando’s future racing plans beyond
the end of the current WEC season?
ZB: Our relationship with Fernando has never been stronger. He was obviously
very disappointed. We let him down, he deserved to be in the race, he was an
absolute star as he always has been when he’s raced with us, and my personal
relationship in working with him. What he does post-Le Mans is up to
Fernando. We have a contract with him for some McLaren activities. I think
when you come off an emotional weekend like that you want to take some time
to reflect and see what he wants to do in the future and if that aligns with
some of McLaren’s activities then that would be great but just like he’s
been driving with Toyota, I think he’s a bit undecided on what he wants to
do yet so we will pick up those conversations when I see him in Le Mans.
Q: (Dieter Rencken – Racing Lines, Racefans.net) The equivalent FIA
conference in Spain two weeks ago, Mattia Binotto said that they were
negotiating to retain the Ferrari veto, the implication being that this was
in order to save the teams or to protect the teams from any sort of dubious
rule changes. How do you feel about them retaining the veto and do you think
that Ferrari should be the watchdog?
Q: Claire, can we start with you?
CW: Why do you keep coming to me? No, I think it’s just silly if I can be
honest. I have a problem in our sport anyway in the fact that I feel it’s
far too democratic. I’ve been quite open about that. I feel that F1 and the
FIA should take more ownership of the regulations. We run it too much in a
collegiate way, which is detrimental when we all have our own agendas. We
need to be looking at this sport and its sustainability into the future and
protecting it and protecting the true DNA of that. By doing that by
committee I think can be very difficult. And I really don’t feel that one
team should have a right, a veto. That makes no sense to me at all.
CH: It’s pretty outdated now. That veto was put in place – from my
understanding – years and years ago to stop regulations changes. Ferrari had
V12 engines, they didn’t suddenly want that to be vetoed, those rules to be
changed because there were all these British garagista teams that were
coming into the sport. But that was in the sixties and things have obviously
moved on. I think it’s a right – if I’m not wrong – for the longest standing
team, not bespoke just for Ferrari but they are the longest standing team.
You can view it two weeks: you can say, OK, it’s a safety net, if they are
there representing the teams, but ultimately they are there representing
Ferrari. Probably, if we’re going for a clean sheet of paper it makes sense
for it not to be there and as Claire says, same rules for everyone.
CA: I would concur. I think we need Formula One to be progressive rather
than defensive and the ability to block due process can be perceived or
decided to be a positive for the sport is probably not good. Having said
that, we completely recognise the specific value of Ferrari to the sport but
which can be reflected probably in the commercial agreement and not in the
governance.
ZB: I think it’s very kind of him to offer to represent the teams’ interests
but I think, as has been said before me, we all have varying interests and I
think like Claire said, Formula One themselves want to do what’s in the best
interests of the sport which I think ultimately is in the best interests of
all us and we we’re best having our own individual negotiations when and if
that is appropriate and as Cyril said, I think Ferrari bring a tremendous
amount to the sport and that can be recognised in other ways.
AG: I try hard not to get involved in F1 politics.
Q: (Jerome Pugmire – Associated Press) Christian, you were speaking about
Max being in the form of his life. Yesterday he said he’s matured a bit, do
you sense that and is that linked to his form and in what ways do you think
he has matured if he has?
CH: I think really if you wind the clock back 12 months it was probably the
lowest weekend, last year, of his career, having a car capable of winning
and crashing in FP3 and not being able to take part in qualifying. That was
very tough for him and I think he went away from that race and he reflected
hard on it. Since Montreal last year he’s really just stepped things up a
gear and he’s been a phenomenal force whenever he’s been in the car. The way
he started this season has been outstanding. He’s overachieved in certain
aspects and I think he’s got that roundedness of maturity and is very much
leading the team development-wise. I think he’s enjoying and relishing that
role as well, so yeah, if you compare Max Verstappen May 23, 2019 to the
equivalent time last year he’s evolved a tremendous amount and I think
that’s again the benefit of experience as well. |