Q & A with Sam Michael

Sam Michael - Williams technical director: In terms of aero resource, up until now we've been about 50/50 between this year and next season. We have one other aero upgrade for the year that will come in Fuji. After that (which was scheduled to be released this week) everything will be focused on next year.

Q. Will the 2008 car simply be a more refined version of this year's car?

SM: It's not an evolution of the FW29; it's a new car. A car that's a revolution is fast and wins races. It's not the same car as this year's. We've started from scratch. It's not the direct successor.

Q. This car is being designed by Ed Wood, isn't it?

SM: It will be fair to say that this will be the first car that Ed Wood has worked on fully. It's massively good for us. The car, how it physically looks, will be dominated by the aero dept and, although the chief designer has a good impact on it, it's probably the head of aero that has a bigger influence on what the car physically looks like than the chief designer. The chief designer will look at suspension geometry, reliability, and also have a good overview of the aero programme.

Q. And what about the input from (head of aerodynamics) Jon Tomlinson?

SM: Jon didn't start until November, so he has had input on the FW29 but not the initial design. A lot of his input will go into next year.

Q. This year's car seems to be improving. Is it fair to say that new aero parts have stabilised the rear?

SM: We have improved the car. The car's got better and better but it's still not enough. In reality, we need to consolidate where we are with this year's car and we've nearly finished that development.

Q. Are you confident that next year's car will be a big step forward?

SM: What next year brings us is continuity. And it's not just about the engine bolting onto the back of the chassis. It's all the airbox, exhaust, gearbox, hydraulics and electronics that are integrated. And the cooling system. So we already know what all the heat rejection figures are and we can optimise that and make big changes to it. Going into a second year means that helps a lot.

It also helps reliability a lot because this year we haven't had to focus on keeping the car alive, which is what we had to do last year while at the same time trying to design a new installation. So there's no doubt that we're in a much better position to plan properly and go forward.

As with everything in F1, it's all relative. So what improvements we find in FW30 will depend on everybody else. But also having the design office and aero dept structure solid and in place for the last 12 months has been a big part of next year's car as well.

Q. Did you lose much by the departure of Loic Bigois?

SM: No. Ed Wood is chief designer and Jon Tomlinson is head of aerodynamics. We've got a very strong structure underneath Jon. The work started early on FW30 and we're still balancing it with work on this year's car.

Q. When are you planning to launch the new car?

SM: At the moment, we're planning to launch the new car at the start of January, which I think most people will do. We were a bit late with this year's car.

It's not ambitious, it's just different. There's a lot of things we have changed that are just different. None of them are risks. It's not like we're doing something that we're uncertain will work. It's not that sort of design.

Q. Nico Rosberg is very bullish about next year's car. Is that justified?

SM: It is, but we're still rebuilding ourselves to get back to the front. It's not a case of just thinking we're going to win next year's world championship, and Nico's not saying that either. He's just saying what he can see has happened at Williams over the past 12 months from a design point of view, and he can see that next year is going the right way.

We can definitely take a big step forward with the car because we're regularly between eight tenths and a second away from the guys who are on pole. That's the sort of gap we need to close, as well as cover the sort of development they're going to be doing over the winter, because they're not going to stand still either.