Q & A with Jarno Trulli

AUTOSPORT heard Trulli's thoughts following practice in Melbourne.

Q. How did it go today?

Jarno Trulli: Another tough day for me. I lost most of this morning's session, which obviously cost me set-up work. I just had two runs quickly. And in the afternoon the track was mainly wet. Not a useful day for me. But let's see what we can do tomorrow.

Q. Do you still feel like there's a lot of set-up chasing to be done? Are you coming into weekends still hunting for a baseline?

JT: Yeah, and also it's been two race weekends with basically not much running. Not an easy life!

Q. Is it difficult to stay enthusiastic?

JT: You have to. The season is long, I know that. We can develop for future races.

Q. Are you still happy with reliability?

JT: There's still some work to do, as this morning's problems showed. We're confident but from time to time we unfortunately have some trouble - which is not really down to the team's work but our suppliers. There are some parts of the car which are not designed in-house. These are causing most of the problems for us.

Q. Melbourne often sees a lot of attrition, is this race one of your better chances to get near the top 10?

JT: Yeah, but we have to have ten cars stop in front of us to get in the points. It's possible, but I'd say it's not easy. Let's wait and see. Any race to score points you have to finish.

Q. But are the first four races of the season among your best chances to take advantage of others' poor reliability?

JT: Normally yes, they're the races where teams have the most reliability problems so you have more chance of scoring a point if you are lucky. But you have to finish the race as well. Afterwards it will only be more and more difficult to score points.

Q. Lotus is the only new team with a very experienced driver line-up, how much of an advantage is that?

JT: Sure, it's an advantage because you can pick up a lot with experience, in terms of feedback on the car and what's right and what's wrong, really quickly. But on the other hand you have to have a team with the resources to react, and at the moment we are struggling with that, because the team is small and the operation started very late on this project. So at the moment we can solve some problems and we can give some direction, but you will only see the results later on and not now.

Q. Bahrain was decent for Lotus, but you weren't the fastest new team in qualifying? Do you expect to be faster than Virgin this weekend?

JT: Virgin has been quick. Here it's difficult to judge to be honest, they didn't run much. But in Bahrain they were quicker than us. But they have probably focused more on the performance rather than reliability. We personally think we need to fix reliability, then we can work on the performance.

Also they had much more time to work on their car during the winter time than we did on ours. They started their Formula 1 project much, much earlier than ours. So we can't really compare the performance at the moment. Even though we're very close, I think they might again have the edge on us in pure performance. But we're very confident we can get ahead very soon.

Q. Virgin has basically said it can't finish the first four races without backing off, so does it matter for you to out-qualify them?

JT: We always want to try to beat them, so for sure it was disappointing to be behind by just a tenth in Bahrain. But we'll try again here and maybe this track will suit our car better.

Q. Is it getting less stressful in the team now you've got a race weekend out of the way?

JT: For the team it is, but everyone has already had a weekend of experience. Everybody is a little bit more confident, but they are still doing as good a job as they did in Bahrain and they can only do better. Nevertheless, we know that we've got lots of problems with our car, so we really have to keep our eyes wide open.

Q. Today there was a bit of an equaliser with the rain. Was that more or less difficult for you with lower downforce than others?

JT: It's always the same - we've got a 4-5s gap and that's it. It's difficult to say if it's worse or not in the wet. I can't really judge to be honest.

Q. Is it particularly difficult for you here with this surface?

JT: It might be. We didn't really run here in the wet to be honest. Normally when you have a little bit more rubber, like was the case in Bahrain in the race, we perform better. When there is not much grip on track, we struggled a little bit more.

Q. You've said a lot about Mike Gascoyne over the winter, can you reflect on what he's accomplished with Lotus so far?

JT: Everyone knows Mike is very strong in organising people and stuff, and he's done a great job. To set up a team from nothing in such a short time is definitely an achievement, and it was done. Now the worst is probably to come, because obviously being here and having the car running is good - they've done it and achieved it. Now to close the gap is another big step. So let's wait and see. But I'm confident because he's taken on a lot of experienced people. Obviously because we're a new team we're short of resources, but that's another point.

Q. What are the main things that make it difficult for drivers with the twilight timeslot?

JT: Basically we've got two key points about racing so late during the year. One is the twilight, so the shadows suddenly change and there are corners that will become completely blind during the race.

Q. Is Turn 6 one of them?

JT: No, the first sector I would say, this is one of the worst. Where I went off last year, the penultimate corner, as well. On the other hand, the temperature changes, and that might also affect the car performance and tyre performance. This is another point that we don't have to underestimate.

Q. How bad does it get at Turn 3?

JT: The feeling is just like going in and out of the tunnels when you are on the highway. You know the track, but when you drive so quick it's everything.

Q. Is that situation more dangerous this year with the speed differentials between the top cars and the new teams?

JT: We'll find out. I've been pretty good during the last race at taking myself away from the others, maybe because I'm more experienced. I know that there is little you can do when you are 4-5s off. If you lose two more seconds, it's not going to hurt your race. I think it's all down to teams and divers to really understand that other people are racing for victory and we are really just racing for ourselves and lifting off and letting them past won't hurt us.

Q. Do you think this race will see more action than Bahrain?

JT: It's difficult to predict. I want to wait and see, at least four races, before we judge and say 'okay, we have to take some action to make Formula 1 a little bit more interesting'. At the moment I won't say too much.