Paul Stoddart Q&A

"I think it's going to go down as one of the weeks most dominated by one team in modern Grand Prix history, certainly from a press point of view. It's just our moment in time, and I'm just so proud. There aren't the words. It was just so fantastic. It just never stopped, it was just all week long."



"I knew that they were both not on a traction control start, because they were carrying problems at the start of the race, and they were both doing manual starts. I knew they were in with a chance [of escaping the accident], and if this fantastic dream of this week was going to continue I was going to look when all the dust cleared and see two black Minardis still on the track. Well, the rest is history."



"I couldn't believe it. When it happens like that your first concern is, is everybody OK? First of all you look to see if your cars are still there, and are your drivers all right? Then you look to see if everybody else is all right. And then you take stock of what's going to happen. Is it a safety car, is it a red flag? Then there was the incident with the two Arrows on the grid, and I didn't know whether they were going to join or not join. Obviously we wanted it to be a safety car, and when we saw that the track wasn't blocked and the debris wasn't that bad, I actually flicked my headset off to listen to the safety car. I knew it was standing by, and when I heard that Mercedes tear out of the pit lane, I thought, 'Yes! We're going to do this.'"



"Yes. Mark was carrying a differential problem and Alex was carrying a differential temperature problem."



"As I said because of the problems we couldn't use the traction control, and it's all linked to the pit lane speed limit that pops the fuel flap open. We just had to calm it down a little bit, because we knew at that point he was a lap head of Salo. There was no point in doing anything silly, just calm it down, sort the problem, get the car out, and that's exactly what we did."



"Yes we did, but we were going to defend that place come what may, so it would have been a race to the end. Salo had a healthier car underneath him, Mark was at his home race. I wouldn't like to have said what would have happened. Salo had the better car, but Mark had the crowd and he had the grit and determination to hang on to that fifth place. It would have been an interesting ending, I think."



"What could anyone do that would have topped this weekend? They even put us up on the podium and played the national anthem. Schuey stopped me in the pit lane and congratulated me on this weekend. We've just been down in the Ferrari garage, where they said the kindest things, and it's from the heart."



"Forget it. The French liquidator sorted that out when he did his press release yesterday, so I'm not too worried about that."