Mike Gascoyne Q&A

"I think we expected to be the best of the rest, and be fourth in the championship. We've achieved that, and now we're looking to achieve a bit more and hopefully try and get a bit closer to the top three."



"I think the team had fallen a long way back in previous years. We also had a very new engine, and a very new concept of engine, and we had to build the team for the long term and not the short term. I think it had fallen a lot further back than people realised, and it takes time to put that right. We've managed to do that, and we're definitely on the up."



"Not so much really. We did a lot of the work last year, and the car is an evolution of last year's car. Hopefully now we can make steady progress towards the front."



"He's very happy, very relaxed, and very focussed. He was new to the team last year, and the car was very difficult to drive. There was a huge weight of pressure on him, and expectation. It all sort of overwhelmed him. Now he's got a much nicer car to drive, he's more relaxed, he's more focussed, and all of a sudden it becomes easy."



"It's actually made more difference than people probably expected. There's quite a big input from Renault, and we've got Renault engineers in the factory now in Enstone. We work much closer with France, and they're not just an engine supplier to us. We now work in a much more integrated fashion. Although on the face of it it's just a name change, it's actually a lot more."



"It's difficult, because the top teams are always going to spend the budgets they've got, and to be competitive and win, that's what you're going to need to do. I think we've got to make sure that we do have a full grid, and that the smaller teams are able to survive. I think there is still a lot of money in F1, but what you've got to do is spend it wisely. I think the days of milking F1 and not managing teams correctly have gone."