Q & A with Williams' Sam Michael

Q. Was Renault running a softer tyre than everyone in Malaysia?

Sam Michael (Williams's chief operations engineer):

No, we ran a softer tyre.

Q. You ran a softer tyre than Renault?

SM:

No, Renault ran the same tyre as us. Jenson was the only one on a harder tyre; everyone else ran the softer tyre.

Q. Did you have any problems with that?

SM:

No, they were fine; our tyre is different to Renault's, with a different front tyre casing.

Q. Is that just from the different designs of the cars?

SM:

Renault just have different ideas on what to do with the tyres than we do, that's all. Everyone else is on the same casing as us.

Q. Has the twin keel given you fewer options for the set up of the car?

SM:

The car's very good; the car's easy to drive, easy to set up, when you turn up to a track it's very easy to run whatever set up you'd like on it, it responds to changes very accurately, you could change one spring and it does exactly what you'd think it would do, aerodynamically it's a very easy car to drive. We just need to improve the performance level. We don't have any vices in the car; you can see that we've probably done about 18,000 kilometres on this car and we've only had about three or four spins.

Q. On race pace it didn't look like you were too far away from Michael's Ferrari, but do you think they are possibly getting more out of their tyres in qualifying?

SM:

I would be surprised compared to us; normally we get everything out of the car in qualifying, normally it's the other way around. But the performance was closer here, which may have come from the temperature; if you look at the race pace the difference is not that much, although Juan got held up in the last stint; if it wasn't for that then if he didn't get Michael he would have been only 3 or 4 seconds behind him.

Q. But why do you think the performance difference wasn't as great in the race as it was in qualifying?

SM:

Potentially it's just the temperature as well, how the tyres react to the temperature. The car, set up wise, is identical; we don't change the set up between qualifying and the race. It may be that they had a bigger performance delta to us anyway, but they went through a qualifying set up which helped them in qualifying but lost them a bit for the race. It could be because of that.

Q. Was there any sort of warning on Ralf's engine before it let go?

SM:

No, it just went. It wasn't overheating, as the temperatures were fine.

Q. Was there much damage after his two incidents with Webber?

SM:

Ralf said potentially he might have damaged his front wing end plates, so we had a look at it as it was driving past on the straight and we didn't see anything, but the car's back now so I'll go and have a look at it.

Q. Did you make any adjustments to Juan's car at the stops?

SM:

Yep.

Q. Any more on that?

SM:

No - we just made some adjustments (smiles).

Q. Patrick [Head] was very worried about Ferrari's pace after qualifying, but can you take any comfort in being effectively only three seconds back at the end of the race?

SM:

I think so, but at the end of the day if you want to fight properly for a win you can't start from fourth and seventh on the grid, and that comes because we don't have enough performance. We need more performance out of the car; it's as simple as that.

Q. Performance over the one lap?

SM:

No, all the time. The most important thing is race performance, and it comes from everything; it comes from the chassis, from the engine, and from the tyres.

Q. You were running a very similar pit strategy to Ferrari, so it seems that the problem is really mostly about qualifying.

SM:

Yes.

Q. Is there a reason for this difference?

SM:

Not really; it's down to the performance of the car. I wouldn't read too much into qualifying versus the race; at the end of the day we need to work harder to beat Ferrari really. If you look at the points and the Constructor's Championship, that's what matters.

Q. Do the conditions here have any bearing on the coming race in Bahrain?

SM:

I don't think so. I think Bahrain is actually going to be colder than here; if you look at the temperature predictions, it's probably going to be ten degrees colder. And whatever the track brings we don't know; we don't know anything about the circuit yet.

Q. Do you have more steps in the engine coming shortly?

SM:

Yeah, we have a little bit every race. It's the same philosophy we have with tyres and aerodynamics, just trying to take a little step every now and again.

Q. What did you think of the pace of BAR today?

SM:

Good; they were only ten seconds behind us, although I'm sure it would have been bigger if we kept pushing to the end, if Juan was racing Michael. But they've improved a lot; they're doing a good job.