Q & A with Ron Dennis

Ron Dennis: I am a little bit drained. It is quite hot on the pit wall and our race was really about second-guessing the safety car. And we did it most of the time.

With Heikki (Kovalainen), we just wanted to get one more lap of clean air on (Nick) Heidfeld's BMW and then of course the accident happened. That took away our second place. Having fought past Alonso for fifth he reached for his visor to clean it, and hit the speed limiter, which passed the position back to Fernando.

In the end it is a good weekend for the team, and the most enjoyable part is our pace. We had a lot of pace, but we know the circuits coming up are going to be different. But I think we will be strong.

Q. It must have been very positive for morale as well?

RD: It has been a challenging few months in many different ways. The best way to do anything in this sport is to do it at the circuit, and win very competitively. And that is what we did today.

Q. It looked like you were playing the safety car in terms of when you were bringing Lewis in?

RD: Our stops were pure safety car stops. We had plenty of margins on all of our stops, and it is so easy with the benefit of hindsight. We could have brought Heikki in one lap earlier, and avoided the safety car. But on the other hand, you can fumble a pitstop and we thought the extra second or two we would have pulled on Heidfeld would have given us a really dead-safe second place.

At the end of the day, you are talking about a decision that is made in a window of one minute and a half. There are lots of could-have-beens, and we should be comfortable to not just go away with a race win, but also a knowledge that we have a very competitive racing car not just on this circuit but also future circuits.

There is a very long way to go yet. We will enjoy the moment but we will try and take a faster racing car to Malaysia.

Q. What did you make of Kovalainen's weekend?

RD: Other than his incident at the end, he has had faultless tests, he has got progressively better and he will get better. Of course he has got tremendous competition from Lewis, but they have both got competitive cars so we are very happy.

Q. Are you surprised by Ferrari's difficult weekend?

RD: I think every Grand Prix team experiences difficult weekends. They have got a lot of depth and we are under no illusions that they will come back and will be very competitive in Malaysia and the rest of the season. All we can do is try and stay focused on our own efforts and that is what we will do.

Q. How important is it for you to take this victory after all the rumours of the last few weeks?

RD: Well. I think that rumours are just that. Our objective always is to look forward, focus on the next race and the rest of the season. That is what we have done. I think we have shown we have a very competitive car; our cars were very reliable through the weekend, so we will go to Malaysia with a very positive mood.

Q. You have said you believe that we will have to wait until Spain to see a true picture of performance. What are you expecting from next weekend?

RD: There are lots of things we have learned, like the margin we have on cooling and brakes and everything. So there is nothing we feel particularly weak at at the moment. We are trying to develop the car through the rest of the year.

Q. How were your starts?

RD: Someone was telling us our starts weren't very good on the line, but I think we showed our starting performance is quite good.

Q. Your mechanics worked late on Friday night, what happened?

RD: There was some minor damage to our gearboxes that occurred on the test beds. We just made quite sure that we rectified those problems. It was well detected but the damage was nothing to do with assembly, just that the running-in process wasn't quite correctly done. As the gearbox is on for four races, we didn't want to carry anything through.

Q. Given the results of winter testing, does 14 points for McLaren and one for Ferrari exceed expectations?

RD: I haven't even thought about it, in all fairness. It is so hot on the pit wall, and to concentrate hard to try and take the right decisions with everybody was tough. This was a strange race because we were varying the strategy purely on safety car deployment.

That is something that is very seat of the pants, and there is dialogue on the pit wall to try and second-guess the situation. The safety car had a huge effect on the outcome of the race, and I am just happy that it didn't determine the race winner. That would have been perverse in the circumstances.

I have a strong disappointment in not coming second as well, but I am sure there are a lot of people with worse feelings than I have got at the moment.

Q. Do you believe BMW can be a challenger this year?

RD: I think even if the next two races we maintain the competitiveness, the true strengths of everybody's cars will not be known until Barcelona. Between now and then we are making cars faster.

Q. Another hot race next week? How was Lewis today?

RD: I was very surprised. He was very fresh, and he was very comfortable.

Q. And was Lewis saving the engine?

RD: Yes, it was very easy!