Bobby Rahal Q&A

"Working all day! Working 14 hours a day, it seems. So much of this car was done prior to my official arrival. I think the big thing for me is just really expressing the vision to everyone who works at Jaguar Racing, and getting everybody to buy into that and to go forward together as a team, really creating a team. We have to be that if we want to be successful in the future, and that's going to take some time. It's one of those things that if you don't start you'll never get there, so we've started."



"Yes, it was a reasonable help. Again, the races are almost just the tip of the iceberg. It's what goes on getting to that point which is where the real results are created. Of course that's what we've been doing over the last few months, just trying to get the team to recognise what out goals are, and then work together."



"I don't think so. I guess you never really know quite what to expect. I guess I expected it to be extremely difficult. I think maybe we're still in the honeymoon period, and I'm not sure if the full picture has been seen by me yet. But I think I understand that this is an extremely difficult proposition. Often recognising the nature of the challenge is the most important thing, so I recognise this as being a very difficult one."



"Well, Neil remains as chairman of the team. He's back in Detroit, so his presence will probably be much less than it was. I expect him to come to many of the races, however, but on a day-to-day basis I think he'll probably be back in the States most of the time."



"I think he brings us a lot of good, solid engineering philosophy. It fits very well with Mark Handford and John Russell. Steve also brings us the perspective of having been with some of the best teams over the last two decades, whether it was McLaren in the eighties, Ferrari, then back to McLaren in its renaissance, really. When McLaren came out of the doldrums in 1996-'97, Steve was a part of that process. I think it's important for us to understand the nature of the competition, and also to understand what are the things that we are going to have to do both now and in the future to meet that challenge."



"I think the tyre war could have a huge affect; generally every tyre war always does, and there's no reason to believe otherwise. Ultimately I have a tremendous degree of faith in Michelin, and I think Pierre Dupasquier is a very impressive guy, and his team is very impressive. How are they going to go this year? You don't want to put unreal expectations on them or on yourself, but I have no doubt that that's going to be a great partnership."



"I hope that's every day this year, but I doubt that will be the case! I think it could dramatically alter the way the grid looks on certain weekends, and we obviously hope that their impact is going to be extremely positive, and we're going to benefit tremendously as a result."