Johnny Herbert Q&A

"It gave me a good impression of what Champ Car racing on ovals is all about. It wasn't scary or anything, I wasn't fazed by any part of it. It was a bit different from what I thought it would be. I thought there was going to be a lot more driver input. I've always like high speed corners and I have to say I enjoyed it a lot. The main thing is style - you've got to be very smooth but committed at the same time. The basic thing is to be able to carry the speed through the corners, get the laps going and bring the times down. You have to do a bit of left foot braking and I'm happier doing it in this than I was in Formula 1 because my left foot obviously got damaged [in his 1988 Formula 3000 crash at Brands Hatch] and I found it difficult to get the right feel. In the high speeds on an oval, all you need to do is stop the car pitching around so you just breathe on it. And that's OK."



"I've always been smooth and it all went very nicely for me. It felt very natural from the first laps I did. It wasn't a case of build up and take things easy, it was more 'oh, this is all right, I can go a bit quicker here and there'. I was being careful, but I got into it very quickly. I thought it was easy when I drove around in a Ferrari 355 on Monday, but I thought that was just because the car wasn't that quick. You've got to be committed to it, but if you are then it gives you a lot of satisfaction."



"Well, Turn One is OK with the banking, but then you seem to go slightly down into a compression which you can use to your advantage. You can commit yourself much more than you can at Turn Four, because that is basically the same turn but it doesn't have the compression to help you. Turn Four is definitely more difficult than Turn One, for sure. I felt more on edge there compared to the others. It's very quick into Turn Two but, again, it goes down a bit and you can use the compression and the banking and it gives you a lot of grip, and Turn Three is like Blanchimont at Spa. It's flat but it's not flat, no problem - it gives you a bit of a thrill. You've got four completely different corners, even though you've got two that look the same. So it's nice to have such a variation."



"I never had a big problem with that at Indy [in Formula 1] last year. To me it's no different than having Armco there, other than it's a different colour and there's a gap in between. At Monaco, you've got that next to you all the way around the track. For me it's not a problem. Maybe a Superspeedway would be a bit more intimidating, but I didn't feel intimidated at all today."



"It was one of the main aims of today. I thought we might run out of time today, because I knew the guys from CART wanted to use today as a tyre test and get some data for the teams back home, but I think it helped that I got into the groove quite quickly and they let me have a couple of hours in it. That enabled me to learn quite a lot from today as well."



"The best balance I had was with the standard Handford device. When I ran the other two, the first one was a bit looser at the back and it gave me a push, which meant I was having to back off. Then we tried a variation on that and I still had a push. Then we reverted back to the original one which, while it was slower down the straight, meant I could go into the corners so much quicker. It was good and interesting from that point of view."



"Is that all? Sod it! I could have done that."



"Yeah, but I don't think they'll take long to beat that one..."



"It was a good indication of what to expect. It was good to have Alex [Barron] there, because he's not a bad little pedaller. Firstly it was good to have him there because I'd not been on an oval before and, secondly, I was quicker than him as well. I'm happy with that. It gives me more determination to do it next year. I want to do it now more than ever."