By FIA
July 29 2005

Team SAUBER PETRONAS' technical director Willy Rampf answers the media's questions at the FIA's Friday press conference leading into this weekend's Hungarian GP.

Could you give us some sort of idea of progress with V8 engines and/or V8-engined chassis? How are things going – just some sort of indication.

Willy Rampf: We don’t have any experience with the V8s, because we haven’t done any testing with a V8 in our current chassis.

When do you expect to be able to have a V8?

WR: The target is that for the winter testing we prepare one car, an interim car with the V8 engine.

And when can you have that? Early December?

WR: Yes, exactly.

When do expect to get a mock-up V8?

WR: I think we will get a mock-up V8 fairly soon, because we need it to prepare the installation in our current chassis.

Willy, first of all, how are things changing at Sauber with the investment of BMW?

WR: First, we speak more German because we have more contacts with BMW. On the investment side? I think it’s more on the organisation side, because we have to know the people in Munich, we are working together in the near future and also to get used to their procedures. I mean how they work, how they make decisions, how we make decisions. I think this is the biggest part. On the investment side, for this year there is no additional investment. We continue with the development of the existing C24, but the main part of the development is to get the C25, the concept of C25, next year’s car, going and so we spend most of the wind tunnel time with C25.

Do you see a big expansion in terms of your side of things or do you see it more taking place in Munich, for instance?

WR: I think there will be a noticeable expansion on our side in Hinwil because the target has to be to run the wind tunnel in three shifts, something which we don’t do yet, we are far away from this. And that needs more people. It’s the same as Guenther said: you cannot just employ people and expect them to work in a good way together. I think it has to grow at quite a moderate rate, that everybody knows what his task is and feels comfortable.

In a way you have a bit of a problem, because Switzerland is a bit of a motor racing desert, you have to import people.

WR: It’s not really like this. We still have a lot of mountains so you should visit us once! So I don’t think that it is a real problem. We have quite a good amount of people from England, experts especially on the aerodynamics side, this is mainly driven by the English people. Overall we have 22 nations in our company so we are used to treating everybody fair and well.

Questions From The Floor:

(Joe Saward – F1 Grand Prix Special) You guys are all setting out to design cars for next year but we don’t know what the qualifying regulations are yet. Can you explain how you are going to do that?

WR: Yes, I can only agree with the comments. You have to take the best guess currently because the decision is already quite late and everyone is working on the concept of the chassis.

(Thierry Tassin – RTBF TV) The car specification you had in Hockenheim, now we come here it is much hotter, did you make any modification to cool the driver down?

WR: We have an inlet duct on top of the chassis to let some air into the cockpit.