Pat Symonds Q&A

"The testing results there have been very good indeed - it's been one of our most competitive circuits. Assuming that we have the tyre that we require there, I think we can have a very competitive performance. I would hope the most competitive of the year."



"I would think it's a little bit tiresome for Jenson, but I think he can handle it."



"I'm pleased with the basic chassis, but we still need to improve the engine and the aerodynamics to match McLaren."



"It didn't go quite as we'd hoped. We really built our strategy around a simple premise, that we had to be leading the McLarens at the end of lap one. And when that didn't happen it was obvious that it was going to be a difficult race for us. Then on top of that on both cars we had an intermittent engine fault. So it became quite a difficult race. To get some points out of that is probably the best we could have hoped for."



"We had to be aggressive with our strategy. We felt McLaren would go one stop, and we didn't think it would be correct to just follow them. We had to try and get the jump on them, and it didn't come off."



"It's funny, because with the Michelin tyre, both the prime and the option were very close, and you probably know we had car on each. And with the one and two stops it was very close. I spent ages on looking at the options, because it was that close. I think Jenson is right in that the way the race panned out we might have been better on one stop. But the tyre wear was quite severe, so it might have been very difficult towards the end of the stints. And of course had we got past the McLarens at the beginning there would have been no doubt we were on the correct strategy. We were being held up a lot, and we were potentially so much quicker."



"Yes, he lost five places there."



"It was one of those mixed races. There's no way I'm ever going to be satisfied with a fifth place. You never feel that that was a Sunday worth spending at a race track! But there have been a lot of worse days, haven't there?"