By Phil Huff
April 25 2008

Honda Racing F1's Rubens Barrichello sat down for the traditional Thursday press conference in Barcelona, as the team prepare for the Spanish Grand Prix. Much was made of his age and experience, but it was his thoughts on the future that kept observers interested, as the Brazilian talked of tyre warmers, slicks and aero rules amongst other things.

Rubens, I think in Turkey it will be 257 times you have turned up to a race. Looking back at the last race you didn't look like a driver about to retire, giving Fernando quite a hard time. What was that like?

It was bad. We were fighting for 10th place. I wish it were first and second. That would have been a lot better. He was having plenty of problems with his rear wing and I was having a lot of understeer on the car. Unfortunately in Formula One nowadays it is still very impossible to overtake. Hopefully in the future, if slicks really come into play, that will be the way to go. To play with a lot less aerodynamic devices and with a lot more grip from the ground and from the tyre that will give us the chance to follow other cars. As soon as I caught him I turned the revs down because there was nothing I could do. I was five kph slower on the straight.

I feel very motivated. You talk to the young guys and they are all sort of fed up with F1, too much to do, PR. My life has kept on getting better and better. The first year with Honda I really did a lot of PR. But they put things in place and I am focussing and putting my energy on the car. I have been working quite hard. Last week I did 140 laps around Barcelona which I thought was phenomenal. I still feel young on that side. I am just going to prove Pedro wrong. I think I have many more years left.

Going back to the car. Do you think you are close to scoring points?

We had a god improvement last week and obviously the first race was what it was and we would have finished in the points already with the car. But the first race is always a bit crazy anyway. In Malaysia we were far out and in Bahrain we had the pace but we did not have the straight line speed to overtake.  But I think we are very close to the points. I think Barcelona is open on that. The car is a good time better. I don't know how much improvement the others made because last week was very difficult to read. It was slicks on the car, people with less fuel and more fuel, so it was really difficult to see. But the car is better - definitely better. We have made an improvement and hopefully that is going to put us on Q3 all the time and that will lead us to points and more.

It would be a nice way to celebrate your record. Apparently the celebrations are going to last several races?

There is a little bit of confusion. You ask everyone and the numbers seem to go up and down, so we decided to take Turkey because that is the races I have taken part in. The ones that are not happy with that, because it seems too early, then we have three races to celebrate - the Brazilian way.

After the test here there was a lot of discussion about the coming ban of tyre warming blankets. A lot of series don't have tyre-warming blankets and have pit stops. Is that going to be a problem for F1, to have this ban?

Well, I think there are good and bad points to be honest. On the one hand people want to see some overtaking which is fair. We all want to see that, but the problem is that I think Formula One could become quite boring. People will invent a car that has a big tank again and whoever stays on the track gains the advantage of that one pit stop. I think at the end of the day it will become a little bit too much like IndyCars or something like that which is fine, but I think Formula One is about the competitiveness of what's going on on the track.

To add to that, I've also raced throughout my whole career before Formula One without tyre blankets but I never saw something like this. You go out of the pits and you already have a chance to spin out of the garage, and when you get to the first corner, it's like an ice rink and so with that, if you get conditions like we've had at Nurburgring in the past or any race that is very cold and we take the wrong tyres, then it's going to be very, very dangerous.

Considering the information about the 2009 aerodynamic package that you have, do you think it's a good direction for Formula One? Will it be easier to drive, easier to overtake?

I think it follows the rule that I think all drivers want which is less aero and better mechanical grip, but whether it will be good or not is a bit too far ahead to know. But I think it is, it's a step that. Honestly, I don't know how we got into the grooves. We raced go-karts, formula cars and everything on slick tyres and all of sudden, for a boy who dreamed of racing in Formula One, they have this tyre that is just ugly. Of course, Bridgestone has done a super job with the tyres because we are going faster and faster, but you saw last week that when we put slick tyres back on the cars, even though it was a hard compound, we went 2.5s faster. That's the way it should be: slick tyres.

Back in '98, when I first tested the tyre, I had a crash that I really thought I was going to stop, but because of the lack of mechanical grip caused by the tyre, I kept on spinning and crashed. So I think we depend a lot on the grip level of the tyre. If we have the whole tyre on the ground, it's going to help a lot on the safety side as well.