Q & A with Martin Whitmarsh

With the memories of last year's troubles still fresh on the team's mind, leading personnel could have been forgiven for being a little cautious about its prospects for the season ahead.

However, as McLaren team principal Martin Whitmarsh took to the stage to talk about the challenges ahead, you could sense an air of confidence about him and what the Woking-based outfit has produced. AUTOSPORT heard what he had to say.

Q. There is a fantastic championship battle in progress. What does Formula 1 and Vodafone McLaren Mercedes in general need to do to put on the best show possible for the fans, and ensure the sport continues to develop and thrive?

Martin Whitmarsh: I think we have obviously got four world champions in the sport this year, and that is exciting. Two of them are in our team and having some old names back is exciting.

Everyone now wants to see McLaren fighting Ferrari, fighting the Mercedes works team - and I am sure Red Bull wants to be competitive. I think we have the hallmarks of a very exciting season, and we have to make sure that we keep perhaps some of the polemics that we have traditionally had in F1 out of the sport, and really concentrate on what a fantastic contest we have this year.

I think certainly lots of fans are very, very excited. We at Vodafone McLaren Mercedes are incredibly excited about this season, so we have to make sure we put on a good show on the track. We have to try and engage more with the fans, we have to work hard at the spectacle and the show of F1. But everyone is rightly excited about what is going to happen this year.

Q. Last year you went into the season with high hopes of doing well, but it didn't materialise over the first half of the season. You have high hopes this season but how high are they compared to 12 months ago?

MW: I think if you are honest as you go into every season, if you are a top team wanting to win, then your hopes are to win every race and the championship. I don't think that has changed. I think we have a high level of confidence.

I know last year we came off the back off two incredibly tough years where we were fighting for the world championship and developing the car until the end of the year. We don't have that excuse this year, although I am incredibly proud of the efforts of everyone in the team to recover from a fairly horrendous start to the year to one that was, I think, relatively competitive and we had a car that was capable of winning at the end of the season.

That was important, because with these new regulations and some new interpretations we had to gain the confidence that we could understand those. I think you will see the cars typically this year look longer - and there is a very interesting tale - this car was finished last night, and we went to put into the lifts in our building which have been designed for the cars and it wouldn't fit in because it was too long. We hadn't realised!

I know, having seen Ferrari's yesterday, that is long - and I think we will see a few long cars that are exploiting the double diffuser interpretation that rather surprised us last year. I think you will see, but you won't see today because as you may have noticed we are being a little bit coy or discreet with the double diffuser, but I am sure people will see it in Valencia though. But we know how hard we have worked and prepared this year.

You never know of course if we have missed something - there are a number of things on this car that I have never seen on an F1 car and I find that heartening. But you never know - there might be some things that are like the double diffuser was for us last year that we have never seen before. So you can never be absolutely confident. We are working hard. This car represents the standard of car that will start to test. It doesn't represent the standard of car that we will race.

I have seen quite a lot of new components for this car already and we've made performance improvements beyond this. We will keep pushing and we proved we are fighters last year. And we proved we can continue to develop - and we developed our car over the course of the season to a greater extend than any other team, although we gave ourselves a lower platform to start from.

I hope that we will start competitive and the season isn't won or lost in the testing, or even in the first few races. You have to push hard if we are fortunate to be highly competitive at the start of the year. We know that the others will be coming at us, so whatever happens we will be fighting throughout the year.

Q. Mercedes-Benz has gone off to do it own works team. How much did Mercedes contribute to the development of last year and if it is the case that this car needs to be developed a lot, are there going to be any restrictions on R&D on this car because they will not be providing as much finance as last year?

MW: Well, Mercedes have been a great partner for 16 years, and we are fortunate they will remain partners for many years to come. They will be great partners and we will have a great engine from them. They were instrumental in developing KERS, which will not feature on the cars this year.

Aside from that, McLaren has and remains with the responsibility for the chassis. The work that we did last year, that development work, came from McLaren. We have the same facilities and the same resources to develop the car. I think it is not just about money. It is about efficiency, it is about your attitude and the approach and process - and we have all those things still. This car, as I said earlier, has developed greatly even from the specification that is sat before you. But we will continue during the season to improve it.

Q. You have said there are a number of things on the car that you have never seen on an F1 car before. To save us a bit of trouble, could you list them?

MW: I think that would spoil the fun for you and us! I think there are some fairly obvious ones and some discrete ones. I think during the course of next week, people will spot, speculate, describe and theorise on a number of the things that can be seen - and fortunately there are some that cannot be seen so readily. I would not want to spoil the sport for any of you. I know you enjoy this process.

We are here to try and retain a competitive advantage, we are here to try and provide you with as much of an incite as we can without giving away any competitive advantage. So just as any other team, I believe Ferrari was fairly discreet about its twin diffuser yesterday, and anyone who visits the back of this car will also see we have been slightly discreet.

Q. It is a little surprising to see that the colour scheme still involves silver, which one associates with Mercedes-Benz. What were your thoughts behind that?

MW: I think this is a McLaren brand. It has been a colouration that works for our partners and for us. We still have a Silver Arrow. We still have a three-pointed star. We still have Mercedes-Benz here. And I am sure our friends and colleagues in Stuttgart want to see four silver cars near the front of each of the races - although we might differ precisely on the order of those four cars.

But I think we will have great competition and as we've said several times here, we've enjoyed a fantastic partnership, it has had various phases and we had quite a few years where Mercedes-Benz was not an equity participant in the group, and a period of time when they have been, but we remain close friends and we work together. They have a Silver Arrow, we have a car that is predominantly silver, but they will look good together.

Q. With no refuelling this year, could that favour one driver over another?

MW: There has always been a task for the driver to manage fuel and tyres during a stint. It is clearly emphasised when you have such heavy cars and potentially longer stints, but I think that is a good thing. I think it adds another aspect. By banning refuelling there are clearly pros and cons. A lot of us really enjoy the strategy and the tactics which arose from having different fuel loads at different times of the race.

Those of us who were very engrossed in the race, and the planning of it and execution of it, had tremendous fun and interest. Whether the public fully understood that? Some people did and some people didn't. Here we have something which is much simpler to understand.

I think also there were clearly times last year where the driver was behind another car, which you knew was stopping earlier than you, and the incentive to risk overtaking was lower. Now the incentive to overtake is greater, and hopefully that will be one element that will help contribute to improving the spectacle of F1 racing.

Q. At the Ferrari launch, Luca di Montezemolo said he did not see a problem in Ferrari selling a car to a new team like US F1, given how much the new teams are struggling. On the question of customer cars, what is McLaren's position on that and in your position within FOTA, how do you think the new teams can be helped?

MW: I think philosophically McLaren believes that it is important F1 entrants develop their own cars. However, we are pragmatists and we have demonstrated in the past a willingness to provide customer cars. We remain willing, but I don't know we are ready to do it quite before Bahrain if a team needs it.

I think we, as McLaren and myself as chairman of FOTA, recognise that we will do all we can to demonstrate that new entrants are possible in F1. I think it is tough and it is clearly tough for the new teams to come into the sport. We know how difficult it is, with all the experience and resources we have to be ready for the start of the season. So it must be very, very difficult for any new team.

I don't think we should apologise for that. F1 is the pinnacle of motorsport and if it was easy for anyone to get out their chequebook and go motor racing at the highest level next year then we would really not have been working as hard as we should have been as established teams. We don't want any team to fail, we should be doing all that we can within the F1 community.

I think FOTA has been a coming-together of all of the teams for the first time in the history of F1. The spirit that exists in F1 is unique now, certainly in my 20 years of experience in the sport. So I think we will do what we can, but ultimately if there are teams that just don't have the capability or resource, or underestimated the task of being at the highest level of motor sport in the world - then some you can help and some you can't.

Ironically quite a lot of these teams have an opportunity to require a Toyota chassis, Toyota built two cars that were available from Christmas, and I am rather surprised that some of them did not do that - they rather looked a gift horse in the mouth. That was perhaps the wrong decision, but nevertheless they had their own reasons for that decision. We have to see in the coming weeks or months whether we can help those new teams to be there to add to the flavour and diversity of F1.

Q. On the subject of rule changes, what is the situation with the potential changes that are going on for next year - the qualifying tyres, the one-stop or two, and potential points change that AUTOSPORT revealed the other day?

MW: The answer is they are going to be discussed in Paris on Monday: there is the Formula One Commission meeting. I sense at the moment there is a good spirit between the FIA, the governing body, the teams, and the commercial rights holder, and those that are involved. There is not a combative process, some of the changes are subtle.

There is a debate about a clear answer as to what is the right thing to do, but what I do positively sense is a feeling of willing compromise by all parties, and we will air all those decisions this afternoon within FOTA, and then seek to have an open mind on Monday.

I cannot predict the outcome, but no one is lobbying hard. I think what we are saying is, are there small elements we can do to improve or demonstrate that we are flexible with regard to the spectacle that we are trying to achieve in F1.

It is very difficult to judge. One of the big important issues is we have new front tyres and we have heavy cars with heavy fuel loads. It sounds minor but the performance of those tyres and the rate of degradation of those tyres will have a massive impact on how those races unfold and what is the best strategy. Frankly we don't have that information at that moment. So on the one hand, we all want clear regulations and we want to tell people how we are going to go motor racing.

But we will be in much better shape to make those decisions if we had good experience with the tyres and we could then gauge how these races typically play out given the tyres we have.

Q. You have gone for two top-line drivers again - and had some recent experience of that being difficult. When you look and see Michael Schumacher coming back, do you worry that you could win lots of battles but lose the war?

MW: I think it is always an issue and it has been a long discussed issue within McLaren.

We have a philosophy that has been maintained for a long time before I was in this team - which is we will go out there and get the best drivers we can. They drive the team on.

I think we have got two drivers who are very honest, and very open. They both want to beat each other, and I would be worried if they didn't. But I think it is going to be clean, it is going to be open and it is going to be co-operative. Inevitably, if they are nip and tuck and are taking points from each other. If you are fighting a one-man team, then it becomes difficult.

But it is great to go motor racing with two great drivers. They are really super personalities, both of them. I have known Lewis for many years, and I am just getting to know Jenson.

They are terrific assets. You have seen it here today, you can sense it. I think the relationship between the two guys: they have respect for one another, they have known each other for a long time and I think there is that trust there that you don't always enjoy between team-mates.

Therefore I am not worried about the polemics within the team. I do accept that if we are successful and rotating the winner, then you can aid a one-man team if you are close to them. But overall, I think two drivers who have a good and honest fight, drive the team forward and hopefully ahead of the competition.