Interview with Pat Symonds

Q: Welcomd Pat, a chance for you to take a breather and think about the year ahead, on top of what was a spectacular performance from Renault

Pat Symonds: "The breather seems to get shorter and shorter year after year, but this is a nice opportunity to come up here and see what is going on. You see lots of people you haven't seen for a while. It is the last little break before we get back into it.

"We are testing next week in Jerez. There are two new cars out for the first time, so there is a lot going on before the start of the season."

Q: Is it true in Formula One that if you stand still then you go backwards?

Symonds: "Oh yeah, and very, very fast. If you look at the performance of the cars through the season, you can see it a lot actually when you look at the times at Barcelona or Jerez in winter testing or compare it with December testing. The progress is just phenomenal, and if you are not making that progress then you disappear backwards very, very fast."

Q: There is a big change for Renault in 2007. Fernando Alonso has gone, but will the team feel his loss?

Symonds: "Yes, of course we will. He is a great driver. He did a fantastic job with us, and it was a real pleasure working with him. I think it is a natural thing for people to move on and we as a team have to move on, so it is a big change for us and we will feel the loss. But there are a lot of changes in a lot of teams this year; it makes 2007 very, very interesting."

Q: We were saying backstage before you came up, that we cannot remember a time when so many top drivers have switched among so many of the top teams

Symonds: "Yeah, that is absolutely right. It is not just limited to drivers. The Ferrari situation with Ross [Brawn] leaving, and Adrian Newey's first car at Red Bull. A lot of us who have been on the Michelin tyres changing to the Bridgestone tyres. There are really some fundamental differences for 2007, and at this stage, particularly before we start testing, trying to call the season is a very, very difficult thing to do.

Q: You mentioned the tyres. Everyone is running on Bridgestones in 2007. Are you for or against a single tyre formula, or do you enjoy the competition brought about by a tyre war?

Symonds: "Two separate questions. Certainly I enjoy the tyre war. Tyres are fascinating. I am an engineer and I like toys to play with, it is a fact. And tyres are one of the more interesting parts of a racing car. But I think we have to remember why we do it, and we don't do it for my benefit, we do it for the benefit of everyone who is watching us on television.

"I think that the single tyre formula is better, in that it closes things up. But it is not without its problems. Some of the good racing that has happened in the last few years is because the performance profile of the different tyres changes through the race. Maybe the Bridgestone starts strongly and then the Michelin comes good later on, and that can lead to exciting racing.

"You have to remember that while the tyre performance will be similar, they will be similar at all times. So the cars will be close but they won't necessarily have that little bit that they need to overtake or to challenge."

Q: Will Bridgestone continue to develop robustly throughout the year, or is it a case of, 'well, we are supplying everybody with the same rubber, we will just leave it at that'?

Symonds: "It is very much a case of leaving it at that. We know today what tyre we will be using in Brazil. We know exactly what the compound will be and we know exactly what the construction will be. I know that right now. Over the last few years, I have probably only made final decisions about the tyres we will use two weeks before the race."

Q: A new driver for 2007. Fernando has gone and in comes Heikki Kovalainen, who has a very bright future with Renault and in F1

Symonds: "Yeah, I really do believe he has. Over the years I have worked with a lot of good drivers, and not just Fernando. I have worked with Michael Schumacher, Ayrton (Senna), I worked with Nelson Piquet - many world champions and many fast drivers. I guess over that time I have started to realise some of the less obvious things that make a driver. I am really pleased when I look at Heikki that I see so many of them.

"It goes without saying that for a guy to get into F1 he can drive a racing car fast, he can go around corners fast. But these days that is only part of it, I think to be honest it has always only been a part of it, but it has become more and more apparent these days that you need a little bit more.

"You need all your race craft, you need to understand a race, you need to know when to push a car and when to look after a car so it is in a better condition to push at a different stage. What I see in Heikki is an awful lot of intelligence. He has been coming to the races with us throughout the last year, and he has been like a sponge. Every Saturday night we sit down together and go through what we have learned, and it is a very exciting challenge, actually."

Q: And his race craft is already good, as we saw in GP2?

Symonds: "Absolutely. I have got no doubt about that. He is perhaps a little bit rusty after a year's testing but I think it is a very natural thing that comes back to him, and when we are at this stage next year and look back at 2007, we will see that Heikki had some fantastic races.

"I would not put it past him to win a race this year even as a rookie, it could happen. And we will also look at some spectacular mistakes, thinking why on earth did he do that? But that is part of the learning process."

Q: So the theory on if you don't go off then you are not trying enough?

Symonds: "Absolutely. Really I wasn't just alluding to mistakes of running off the track. But also tactical errors, and perhaps the optimistic chances of overtaking. But you are quite right, you don't want a guy who never falls off - well, not until he has been doing it for a few years."

Q: Giancarlo Fisichella, who has been with the team for several years now, assumes the role of team leader. It really is an important year for Giancarlo, with Heikki looming in his mirrors, Giancarlo needs to take over where Fernando left off

Symonds: "Giancarlo is a very interesting case, actually. He has come in for a fair amount of criticism in the last few years. If you look at Giancarlo's total career you will see that until he met Fernando he had always been quicker than his teammates, going all the way back down to his karting days.

"Some of those teammates were better than others, but Giancarlo had a lot of self-esteem. He believed in himself, he knew he was quick and with Fernando he met someone who could challenge him. Don't forget that on occasion he beat Fernando, I accept it wasn't often, but he did beat him on occasion.

"I think that Fernando was a real monkey on his back, and talking to Giancarlo over the last few months then I think that monkey has gone. I think he can rise to the occasion and get on with the job.

"You have to remember that Giancarlo has won races for us, that is a pretty credible thing to do, and there were a lot of races where he finished right behind Fernando. If we give him the right equipment then I think he can give us a good season."

Q: In Malaysia he just blew everyone away, didn't he?

Symonds: "Absolutely. It was a fantastic drive. And Australia the year before, very similar."

Q: Do you think it would be fair to say it is a 'make or break' year for Giancarlo?

Symonds: "I think with employers like us, every year is make or break for any driver we employ. But yes, I think it is true. Giancarlo is in the latter part of his career rather than the early part of his career, and how long he is able to extend that at the top level is very much down to how things go this year."

Q: We mentioned Ferrari earlier. It was so finely poised through 2006 between Renault and Ferrari, what was it that made the difference on Renault's part?

Symonds: "It is quite a difficult question to answer, because I think we were so equal in so many areas that really it could have gone either way. The statistics show that.

"I think that as we approached the latter part of the year, I think Bridgestone stole the advantage from Michelin, it made it more difficult for us, and of course we had our mid-season problems with questions on legality on some of the parts of our car, which put us back a little bit. Without those two factors, we would have had a very dominant season, but that was not the way it was. Those two factors came in and the season became closer.

"It is a difficult question to answer. We just have to say we were a tiny, tiny little bit better in every department. There is no one thing that you could single out and say that is why Renault won."

Q: You have guided both of the men fighting for the championship last year - Michael Schumacher and Fernando Alonso. Will F1 miss Michael?

Symonds: "I think so. Michael is a bit like the curate's egg - good in parts and bad in parts. I think anyone who is such a world renowned and accepted sportsman is a credit to our sport. People out in the street who know nothing about racing know about Michael Schumacher, and that is a very good thing for our sport.

"His sheer professionalism to those of us inside the sport was fantastic. We always enjoyed competing against him, but he did an awful lot to damage our sport. Those years of domination of him and Ferrari made people leave our sport in droves, and I hope we are moving into a more competitive era now where there is more of a fight for the championship and it is not a foregone conclusion."

Q: There is still an element of love him or loath him. Do you think in the fullness of time, when he is fully relaxed in retirement, that people will look back and say: possibly the greatest driver ever?

Symonds: "Absolutely. I think he possibly is the greatest driver ever already. I don't know why people need to think and meditate and look back. His achievements are absolutely incredible. Yes, there are a few black marks in there, but it is a long career and a few things went wrong."

Q: Your role at Renault has changed in the last few months. You are working your way up to possibly assume total control one day?

Symonds: "No, absolutely not. I am an engineer at heart. That is where my strengths are and that is where my interests are. The change of role at Renault is really that I want to give the young guys their head a little bit.

"We have got so many good people in our company, and so much depth in it, that if I was an old fogey sitting there forever then they are going to leave. So I want them to move on. I hope that we have brought them up well and trained them and want them to take responsibility. But for our company we have to protect the future.

"F1 is going through an awful lot of changes in the next few years. I really want to spend a lot more time thinking about those changes, the implications of them, perhaps trying to stop team principals and the FIA rushing into ideas that perhaps were not thought through in as much detail as I like to think about things. And try and guide the sport in a direction that is not just good for us as Renault but is also good for the sport in general."

Q: Renault has pledged its long-term future to F1. That is good for stability. With some exciting changes coming up in the next few years, healthy times ahead?

Symonds: "Yeah, absolutely. Budgets are hard to find, very hard to find, and we still struggle in that area, and having said that, McLaren have done a fantastic job of pulling together budgets so the money is there to be obtained.

"I think our long term planning is well in place, and as soon as Renault made that commitment we put in place a lot of long term investment. We have got good people, we enjoy our racing, so what can go wrong?"

Q: You mentioned briefly a few minutes ago about moving up and letting young blood into running the lower areas of the team. Williams obviously came fairly unstuck in that respect when Patrick Head took a sideways step. What have you done to make sure this doesn't happen at Renault?

Symonds: "We've had a very long transition. A lot of the guys who are moving up the company have been assuming part of their roles really over the last 18 months now, so well over one season.

"I am not going to step aside. Patrick really did step aside, he moved down to London, he started living there and started spending less time at the factory. I unfortunately still have to go to work every day to pay the mortgage. So I will be there and I will be watching things.

"We are not doing it by taking new people from outside, which is what Williams did, we are doing it by promoting internally people we know and people we trust. I will be keeping an eye on things."

Q: With the engine failure at Monza that probably came about because Fernando had to push the car after the qualifying penalty. You went to Brazil, and I guess the team were nervous, weren't they?

Symonds: "A couple of points there. Firstly, the engine failure in Monza, believe it or not, wasn't as a result of pushing it as a result of what happened in qualifying. We had been testing in Monza prior to the race and we had a little bit of chipping on the valves, which surprised us. It was not something we'd seen for a long while.

"I was talking about the depth of our company earlier, and as soon as we saw that, we said, 'right what is the effect of this?' We actually got some of the chipped valves and ran them on the dyno simulating Monza to see just what limits we could put on the car.

"We had to pull back our normal limits, particularly in terms of revs and ignition advance for Monza, until we got to the point that we believed we could make the engines last with what have been a bit of an inherent problem. The fact that the failure happened meant we didn't quite get those limits in the right place, rather than we were being pushed.

"We were very aware of the possibility of that happening. And interestingly it was second race on Giancarlo's engine, so when we took it out afterwards it was within two laps of the same thing happening. So we were not far off in our estimations.

"Did we feel nervous? I think you have to remember with any championship - and it doesn't matter if it is a world championship or a club racing championship - it is an amalgamation of all the races you do during the season. Every race has the same number of points. So you really should try and be rational and believe that every race has equal importance. Does it happen like that? No, of course it doesn't.

"Yes, I think as we got towards the end of the season, it was difficult, and I think Brazil particularly, I can only talk about what went through my mind, and what I felt was that the statistics were lying in our favour. But if you actually analyse the scenarios there were things that could happen where we could lose. It was not unlikely.

"The statistics might say that Michael has to win and we finish less than fifth, and if we finished then the chances were that we were going to finish above fifth. If we didn't finish, then who else was going to win that race? The only answer before the race was Michael.

"In the week leading up to that and during that weekend, I felt we had every chance of losing it, and that was quite a nervous situation."