Views ahead of the Spanish Grand PrixAhead of the first practice session of the Spanish Grand Prix weekend tomorrow,
Fernando Alonso,
Rubens Barrichello, Tonio Liuzzi, Felipe Massa and test driver Pedro de la Rosa take part in the FIA Thursday press conference in Barcelona.
Q: What are your feelings about the changes to the circuit? Is it better for racing, is it better for you drivers?
Vitantonio LIUZZI: It will give more chances for overtaking in the race because we go from a slow corner before the beginning of the straight and I think it might help to make a better spectacle and more fun in the race. Before, for sure, it was more demanding with two high speed corners which was maybe nicer from the drivers’ point of view, but it’s much better now from a racing point of view.
Rubens BARRICHELLO: I agree with Tonio. I think it might be the case that the racing is better except that we lost two corners that were very challenging and good and if we look back, we’ve lost so many circuits by doing that, so obviously, if you have the space I would rather have a bit more room for going off or something, but still have those corners that we had. It was the same case in Hockenheim, for example. It was just lovely to be there but we had to improve safety and then we cut the track short.
I don’t want to see that happening too often, but in the way that is safer now and probably a little bit better for overtaking, I think we have to agree.
Fernando ALONSO: Yeah, same thing. I think the last corners were very nice, so we will miss them, for sure. I think the overtaking will be exactly the same this year as last year. If you had a quicker car last year, you could exit from the last corner quick enough to overtake people, and now, if you have a quick car, you can follow maybe someone in the chicane. If the cars are very close together, as we found in the test, fighting with someone, it was impossible to follow anyone in the chicane, so I think the chicane was not made for overtaking reasons. I think it’s more for safety issues, so as far as whether it’s safer now than before, I’m happy to run with the new chicane. That’s the important thing.
Q: Can you follow through the final corner?
FA: The final corner? Yes, but it’s not a corner. For us, the straight starts exiting from the chicane because the last corner isn’t a corner any longer.
Q: Somebody said you’re only about 10km/h slower through the final corner.
FA: I don’t know. Maybe.
Felipe MASSA: From the driving point of view, it’s worse, for sure. It’s a new bit of Monte Carlo on the nice Barcelona track, but from the show side of things, it maybe can be a little bit better for overtaking, because it was just impossible to follow another car before because it was not flat, so it was a difficult corner. Now it’s easily flat, so now it’s a little bit easier to follow the car in front, even without losing speed, so for the show it can be…it’s always difficult to overtake in Formula One, but it could be a little bit easier.
Pedro de la ROSA: I think that first of all it’s safer, that’s something that all the drivers were looking forward to, and secondly I find it allows you to get closer to the guy in front in the last corner which is easily taken flat. Before it was not flat, you were keeping momentum. Now it’s acceleration, so it’s different. It gives us a slightly higher percentage chance of overtaking to turn one, so overall, I’m pretty happy with it. I like the chicane, actually, the kerbs etc. add some variety to the track as well.
Q: Rubens, you obviously had some problems in the first three races; had those problems been cured when you came here for the test?
RB: No. I think the car is better than ever. Obviously the test and the effort that the team is making with the car had to result in some changes, so I think the car is a little bit better, but everyone improved, so we have to put the car on the track and see what it does. But although we know where the problem is, it’s been very difficult to address, even though the team has been working 24 hours a day, flat out, and I think it will be some time before we can sort out the problems, but we have some upgrades such as this one and then we’re going to have another for Montreal and then again in France and hopefully by then we will have a competitive car.
Q: How desperate is the team becoming? And how desperate are the drivers becoming?
RB: Well, I don’t think it’s desperation, it’s the fact that we need to work together. It doesn’t matter if I get out of the car and say this car is bad. They already know what the car is. We have to be very specific about the problems and to translate that to the engineers and those people who work on the aerodynamics of the car. Being very specific will make the car better, so now that the wind tunnel is working well and so on, we can see that the things that are happening on the track are happening in the tunnel as well, which wasn’t the case before, so now we are tracking the problem much better.
Q: So was the basic problem a wrongly calibrated wind tunnel?
RB: No, no, but I think the tunnel is too new for us anyway. We are discovering that. I’m not saying it was wrongly calibrated, I think we had to have a better understanding of what it was giving us but right now it’s giving us support, so that’s why I can say that I am confident that we can sort out the problem.
Q: Tonio, what about the changes to your car in the test and what sort of a difference do you think it’s going to make here?
TL: For sure we had some updates in the car, quite a lot, I have to say, but for sure, all the other teams will have improved as much as ours, so I don’t know and I don’t think it will make a big difference in races. We are not where we expected to be anyway at the beginning. We are always explaining the fact that we didn’t test at the beginning of the season. We had a month less than anybody else in testing, and we are still paying for that. We thought it would have been easier to catch up but now we have had quite a few bits. We are still waiting for the big one to come, and hopefully by Canada it will be time to make a big step forward. We are positive because now, with the new technical director and the entire new group, we are growing quicker, let’s say, and we are positive, but for sure we are optimistic for this race, but I think the big change for us will come in a couple of a races.
Q: People are talking about you perhaps moving up to Red Bull Racing; is that something you feel ready for, to move up to what might be termed the senior team within Red Bull?
TL: Inside the Red Bull world, we don’t see a team one or a team two. I’m happy to work with Toro Rosso because it’s a totally Italian group. For sure, this year we’ve had this disadvantage of no testing and we started with this big handicap. I felt ready to have a strong season when the team was ready to have a good car, but now we are both struggling and we are having good times and bad times and at the moment we are struggling. But regarding the step into Red Bull, I don’t know if it will happen. I’m happy to be with Toro Rosso and I’m anyway happy to be in the Red Bull world because they have supported me for many years and I want to give back the help that they’ve given me in the past.
Q: Pedro, you’ve been with McLaren a few years so you’re a good person to judge the atmosphere within the team this year, how much it’s changed, two completely new drivers within the team and some great success; how have things changed?
PdlR: Well, everything is quite different this year, starting obviously with the drivers. I think that Fernando’s arrival at the team has brought great leadership and that translates into people obviously being extremely motivated and him also giving the team very good direction, where we have to go. And then, on the other hand, Lewis just brings youth and he works very hard. He’s always pushing. Lewis has actually been with the team for a long time. Since I’ve been with the team, I’ve always seen him. We’ve been working together for a few years now, so I feel like Fernando is newer to the team than Lewis is, but they both bring very good things and at the end of the day, it’s how you can get all the people, those here and back at the factory, to give 110 percent, and thanks to Fernando we have achieved that.
Q: When you talked about this circuit, you said that if a car works well here, it should work well everywhere. Could you expand on that?
PdlR: Absolutely, l think Barcelona is a great test track, that’s why we like to test here so much because it’s very demanding on the aerodynamic side of the car, but also on the engine, so if your car works well here, you can say that it’s a very complete race car and it will be very very quick everywhere. So that’s why we like to test here so much, and that’s why we are looking forward to this weekend.
Q: Felipe, last weekend you were awarded the Trofeo Bandini; what did that mean to you?
FM: It was very nice. It was nice to see how many important drivers had been awarded this trophy, and for me, it was really nice to be one of them and receive this very nice and important trophy, so I was very happy about that. It gives us even more motivation to receive some good trophies sometimes. It’s really good to keep pushing hard and trying to keep improving and work even harder.
Q: Do you think the test here proved that you are still managing to keep the same distance ahead of the competition?
FM: Well, for sure we’re working very hard, but it’s a little bit difficult to have a 100 percent good idea as to what everybody is doing but it’s also quite important to show speed, to show improvement and I think we made a step forward so we’re quite happy and we will keep working harder to keep improving the car. For sure McLaren was very very competitive in the last races. We expected they would be competitive anyway, so that’s why we have kept working hard.
Q: Fernando, do you think you’ve made a big enough jump forward to be competitive with Ferrari?
FA: I don’t think we know. Nobody knows at the moment. Tomorrow again won’t be the perfect day to see because on Fridays we are always a little bit confused, the results are a bit confused so I think we need to wait and see until Saturday afternoon after qualifying especially in Q1 and Q2 when everybody is on low fuel. In my opinion, we won’t see how quick our car is compared to the Ferrari until that moment. As Pedro has said, we’ve worked hard, we’ve improved the car, but everybody did the same, so now it’s the time to see which of the teams has improved the car a little bit more than the others.
Q: Looking back at the Bahrain Grand Prix, do you just write that off as being not a very good weekend, and move forward, or was there something you felt you had to solve?
FA: I think I will try to forget it. It was a bad weekend, a bad race. These things happen, unfortunately, normally one or two a year, when you never get the perfect balance in the car, you never get the confidence in the car and you lose a few points but this normally happens to everybody, sometime in the season’s 17 races. It will happen to everybody. I tried to score as many points as I could and I’m leading the championship.
Source FIA
