Interview with Colin Kolles

There is little doubt too that as Spyker head towards the end of the 2007 season, they are in far better shape than they have been for many years.

With new owners Vijay Mallya and Michiel Mol, a strong technical team led by Mike Gascoyne and a world championship point under their belt (pending an appeal), autosport.com caught up with Kolles to find out about life at Spyker.

Q: How important was the point from Fuji to the team?

Colin Kolles: "I think it's very important for the team. You know, we work very hard, and to get a point... A point is not a lot in the big picture, but it's a point. And this can bring the team a big step forward."

Q: Everyone talks about the financial benefits of scoring a point, but it's also valuable psychologically as well

Kolles: "It's a psychological benefit. It's a financial one, but it's also psychological. You know that if you have the chance to get a point, you can get there."

Q: It's the difference between believing that you can score a point, and knowing that you can?

Kolles: "Exactly. That's very important."

Q: Scoring points is the team's job, but were you genuinely expecting to do it this year?

Kolles: "Well, you cannot predict something like this, but it was always our aim to score at least one point. And we knew that in rainy conditions that we are quite strong, and we showed that in the past few sessions. When it has been raining, we have shown quite good pace."

Q: The B-spec car has performed well from Spa onwards. Given that it forms the basis for next year's car, you must be feeling quite optimistic about a step up for 2008

Kolles: "We still have to work very hard. We are not thinking that next year we will do this, or we will do that. We just have to continue persisting and trying to move forward."

Q: It's a nice piece of timing, scoring the point just as the change in ownership of the team has been finalised and the future has been secured. What is the next step? For example, will the name of the team change?

Kolles: "There are certain regulations that we have to follow, so we have to look into it. It would definitely be the plan to change the name."

Q: But a team can only change names so many times within a set time period...

Kolles: "Exactly. So we have to look into it. I cannot give you an answer now. It is a matter that the shareholders have to decide."

Q: How much of a difference will the change of ownership make to the team? There's a sense that there will just be a sudden injection of cash and suddenly the whole factory gets upgraded, but in reality how will it make a difference?

Kolles: "It's a little bit different. You have to see it like this.

"You have an old airplane, and you have to restore this old airplane. It was once a successful airplane, but then at a certain stage it was not successful anymore so you have to do a restoration to it. If you have a lot of money you restore the airplane quite quickly. If you have not so much money, it takes longer.

"But now, the process of restoration is done. We have upgraded the factory, we have upgraded the wind tunnel.

"Now, the people have the instruments to produce a good car. So now you need the fuel to take off. And this is basically how you have to see it."

Q: Will you add more people?

Kolles: "Not if you speak in terms of, all of a sudden you add 100 more people. That's not the plan. We have to have the right quality. We have a lot of young engineers under the leadership of Mike [Gascoyne], who has a lot of experience, and I think that this is a good mixture.

"We will have more people obviously, because we want to run the wind tunnel for 24 hours so you need to have more people to pick up those capabilities. So this will be improved. But it's not that you will increase the staff by 30 percent or something. It will be selective."

Q: Has there been any progress in the negotiations regarding a new Concorde agreement for next year?

Kolles: "From our point of view, if there is no new Concorde agreement, then the existing one will stay in place with certain amendments that have been agreed."

Q: And you obviously have no problem with that

Kolles: "We'd have no problem with that. So we'll continue arbitration (on the matter of customer cars)."

Q: It puts Prodrive into an interesting situation...

Kolles: "Yes. And not only Prodrive!"

Q: So what is the next step in the process?

Kolles: "The next meeting is on the ninth of October, as far as I am aware. So, next week. And then I think the timetable will be set out, so we'll go from there."