Craig Pollock Q&A

"Basically we did everything right, and other teams did things wrong. It might be the opposite way round at another race, but you just have to be there when it all comes together. Jacques was very happy on the podium - the happiest I've seen him on a podium since the Indianapolis 500. He was just so unbelievably relieved."



"There's luck involved, but our car is good in hot temperatures as well. The hotter it is, the better we're going to be. In the first races of the year, if you think about Australia, Malaysian and Brazil have been hot races, and that's where we've been very good. Our engine runs very cold in our chassis, and we cannot make it run any warmer. So the guys who run at high temperatures are probably the guys who are going to blow up. It was a very, very good race for the team. Jacques was on a single stop strategy and Olivier was on a two-stop, and it was up to Jacques to let Olivier through. We thought Olivier would have got Jacques at the start, but he didn't. So it was Jacques' choice to let him past, and it just worked beautifully."



"Well that was the idea. We wanted to try and confirm it as early as possible, to get rid of the speculation and to actually stabilise the team. Obviously the team has slightly underperformed this year, so it was really important just to get that out of the way so all we have to do is concentrate on driving and making the car fast."



"Jacques had certain options. He had a signed contract with us, but there was a clause in there, a performance clause, and we didn't perform up to that. It's another leap of faith on Jacques' part. He believes in the team, so it's good to put it to bed."



"I think he is disappointed with the way the year's gone. He really held in there for the first two years like a trooper, the same way as everybody in our facility did. It was not just Jacques Villeneuve, but the 400 people there building a car for him. We at this time have failed to give him the car that we said we were going to give him, so the frustration is there. That is also why he's part of a team, and a team comprises more than one person."



"If I knew exactly where the weak areas were we wouldn't be having the problems! We're a very analytical team, and we're trying to pinpoint the weak areas, because it's not just one area. We're going to strengthen things, and we do have our ideas."



"It's never going to get any easier, and when we started we didn't know that the manufacturers were going to come in. They've raised the level tremendously, because they've got huge budgets, and what we've got to do is get in there, match it, and get up to their level."



"It was distracting certainly at the start of the year, and there's been a lot of speculation in the paddock. But Honda has two signed contracts, one with Jordan, one with us, and we expect them to honour their contracts. They've said absolutely that they fully intend to honour those contracts, and therefore we both have engines for next year, and then it's a question of what happens thereafter."



"We have other aero packages coming, and updates in certain elements of the car. Everybody back in our facility is working extremely hard. Just because we're performing badly at the moment doesn't mean to say that we're just going to give up, lie on our backs, and flap our legs round about. It's not the way we do it. We're in there, we're fighting, we're going to fight all the way to the end of the season, but we're going to try to make sure that we don't build the same elements of this year's car into next year's car."



"The pressure's already on now. If it gets any higher, I don't know who could take all that! But we're going to hang in there, we're going to fight for it. All we want to do is win. We want to give a good car to both drivers, and at the moment the car hasn't been up to the team's expectations."



"Of course he has. We hired him because of his experience, and we believe in him as a driver. I'd say that he's been even a little bit better than we expected, and certainly he's a very good team mate for Jacques."



"Exactly. That's when you do have to work as a team. Jacques made a mistake going in, and it wasn't just a little touch, it was quite a big shunt that put Olivier off. He was out of the race and Jacques' car was an absolute mess, he lost a lot of downforce and he still held in there and made it to the end of the race. After that Olivier calmed down and then they talked it out."



"He'll be racing in F1, and we expect him to be racing with us."