Q & A with Jean Todt

Jean Todt: It's a little bit like Silverstone, when you are pretending to win and you finish second and fifth. So a bit disappointed but, saying that, we chose a strategy, which was to do qualifying with a lot of fuel, and it's always easy afterwards to say it was good or not good. But this time, it was not good enough to allow us to win the race.

Second and fifth is not as good as first and second, but [these are] important points in the championship. It is making it more difficult, because every time you lose three points to the opposition who - mainly with one car, one driver - makes no mistakes, everything goes well, so it makes things difficult. But that's the challenge.

Q: How did you like the second last lap present from Kimi Raikkonen?

Todt: I would have preferred to get one present in front, one more, so we had half a present. We got a Finnish/German present, but we didn't get a Spanish/France present. Maybe next time.

Q: Why are Ferrari in favour of a complete engine freeze?

Todt: We have short memories, gentlemen. Now we have FIA rules from 2008 onwards, then it was the Maranello meeting, then I understand it was Monte Carlo meeting, and the Maranello meeting is a proposal which allowed some limited work on the engine every year, which we feel is a reasonable proposal.

Some of the other competitors are not in favour of that, they are in favour of the Monte Carlo proposal, and we are not in favour of it. Which is not the first time. As we don't agree, what happens? We go back to FIA rules, which is freezing the engine.

Q: Ideally, Ferrari would still be in favour of the Maranello agreement.

Todt: We agreed on that, and normally if we do agree on something we will not come back on our word, but you must bear in mind that among the reasons we say that Formula One is too expensive. It has no meaning for the top teams to have close to a 1,000 people, to spend what the top teams spend, and we must really think about the interests of the sport and see how we can reduce the costs.

So that's what we try to achieve, but it seems that some competitors like to spend money. Honestly, I feel that for Ferrari it would be good to take Formula One as a revenue for the company, which could be quite easy considering the amount of commercial revenues we have.

Q: There seemed to be a lack of grip all weekend. Have you already had an analysis what went wrong this weekend?

Todt: If you look carefully at the lap times of [Jarno] Trulli during qualifying, he's about one second slower than Michael [Schumacher]. Weight is performance, and during the race, if you see that once Michael managed on lap 24 to pass Trulli, when you look at the final result, Trulli is a lap behind. We were probably missing some grip in qualifying, but still our performance was not so bad.

Q: But I'm sure you would like to be in front of Renault, so what's the difference?

Todt: Probably it's a little bit everywhere, they have a better first lap in qualifying, about two tenths. If you take the weight of the cars, knowing when they stopped, when we stopped, it's about two tenths, so maybe they have a better first lap. And as for consistency, it's very difficult from one race to another one, the development of the track, the development of the tyres, the weather conditions.

Q: When did you realise it was going to be damage limitation? Before you got here, or during the weekend?

Todt: At the end of the race. If the race is not over, anything can happen, and to finish second and fifth as opposed to first and fourth is three points difference. It's limited, but I would prefer the other way around.

Q: We've seen McLaren make some significant improvements over the last two or three races; are you worried that they could start taking points away from Michael in the championship?

Todt: It all depends on where they will finish. If they finish between Renault and us, it's no good. If we are in front and they finish in front of Renault, it will be good for us.

Q: Do you have the development in planning to improve and beat the McLarens and Renaults?

Todt: I would say that at the moment, McLaren are behind us. It doesn't mean that they are not strong - they are strong, and from one race to another, it's such a little difference in lap time that you cannot predict in which order it will be. So far, the most consistent is [Fernando] Alonso with Renault and Michelin. It's the only thing we can really state at the moment.

Q: Have you any idea what makes Renault so strong?

Todt: They have a good package, good driver, good team, no mistakes.

Q: Michelin have never won at Indianapolis. Do you think next weekend's race will provide us with an indication of where this championship fight's going, whether you can respond to Renault?

Todt: the biggest problem at the moment is that they can allow themselves not to have a very good race, which has not happened so far, and on our side we cannot allow that to ourselves, because it would make a much bigger gap. So on this side, they are in a much stronger position than what we are.

It is not only one race. And there's no reason why they should not be competitive [at Indy], as there is no reason why we should not be competitive. How competitive? There will not be a big difference.

Q: Indianapolis could be the key of the championship?

Todt: Why?

Q: If Alonso wins again?

Todt: And if we finish second?

Q: Do you have any particular chassis or engine developments coming that may give you an advantage over Renault? Is there any step that you've seen that might encourage you?

Todt: You know, we know roughly what is coming for us, but we don't know what is coming for the others, so it's during the course of the race weekend that we have an understanding. But when you do seven hundred kilometres a day in private testing, it's because you have something to test that is due to improve the performance of the car. That we don't know.

Q: Have you stepped up the rate of development in response to Renault? Have you actually accelerated the rhythm of development?

Todt: No, we do what we can do.

Q: It's now half time in the season. In the last four races, the gap of Alonso to Michael has risen every time a little bit. How does this affect the general feeling in the team?

Todt: General feeling? We are still fighting and hoping that we can still win races and pretend to improve our position in the championship.

Q: But realisitically it's getting more and more difficult every time.

Todt: Let's hope it gets more and more easy. If we can reverse the trend, we will try. I still believe there is a chance.

Q: There was a lot of talk about the BMW rear wing. Is it something you have been paying attention to?

Todt: No. Talk about our car because we had a bigger top speed because we had flexible wings. So it was a new rule and we still have good top speed.

Q: How do you approach Indy, a big American market for you, after last year...

Todt: We approach Indy like a normal race, which was not a normal race last year, but for us it was a normal race.

Q: Last year it was even more difficult, but where is the difference between last year and this year? The gap is now getting more and more...

Todt: You say last year it was more and more so it was more, so it's less than last year.

Q: Last year, at some point you had to say OK, it's not going to happen this year, so how far are you from that point?

Todt: For me, I like numbers, so we still have nine races to go and numbers are still allowing us to think that we can achieve what we want to achieve.

Q: Last year, McLaren were in a similar situation to Ferrari in that they were behind the Renault team and the Renault team kept trotting out win after win and they chose to go for a very aggressive development to try and claw back the lost pace to the cost of reliability. Will you be taking a balance of one over the other to try and claw back the gap to Renault?

Todt: But what do you mean by reliability, mainly on engine?

Q: Would you risk trying for a win? Because finishing second obviously isn't enough any more, you've got to start winning some races.

Todt: We must be more competitive and still reliable but otherwise it doesn't mean anything. Not a bigger risk, just trying to do a better job.