Q & A with Sam Michael

Q: How do you feel about Antonio Pizzonia's qualifying lap today?

Sam Michael: "Antonio drove too conservatively in the second part of qualifying. The first qualifying was good, he was behind Juan in the morning, in pre-qualifying he did very strong, and then for the main qualifying he didn't get it together, really. So he just drove too conservatively at the braking areas and the high speed sections, and because of that ended up with more understeer by the end of the lap, which cost him another couple of tenths again.

"But at the end of the day he's still at a position where he can score points tomorrow - his longer-run pace in the other practice sessions was good, so as long as he keeps his head down and doesn't make mistakes tomorrow, we expect him to pick up a couple of points. He's made life difficult for himself, starting where he is, but you have to get on and see where he ends up tomorrow."

Q: How do you rate his overall performance this weekend? Is it what you expected?

Michael: "Well he's obviously fast and you can see what he can do in practice sessions and what he did in the first qualifying session, but he's got to deliver to us tomorrow really, so let's see what he can do during the race; it's a bit hard to rate him now."

Q: Are you making plans for Ralf Schumacher to come back in Hungary?

Michael: "We've had plans for Ralf to come back every race, which is why we've done a race by race decision with Marc Gene and Antonio, so we have another plan in place to bring Ralf back in Budapest. But obviously we're at the whim of the doctors' decision, really, as Ralf is as well."

Q: Would you want Ralf to do a shakedown before he races?

Michael: "Yeah, we have a shakedown planned before Budapest and another shakedown planned before Spa, and he'll either make it to the shakedowns and run in those Grands Prix if everything's OK, or he won't. But everything's in place. The shakedown is about 20 laps around Silverstone's national circuit - it wouldn't be enough to run a new driver but he's an experienced driver so he'd know within a couple of runs whether he's OK or not.

"We want to improve on our current Championship position. We're in fourth and we'd like to get into third place, so we're very anxious to see Ralf back - he's very experienced and a very talented driver, that's never been a question, so we want him back in the car as soon as possible."

Q: Has the team lacked his set-up knowledge and technical feedback in the last couple of races?

Michael: "Oh, definitely. I mean, even disregarding any [difference in the] qualities of technical ability between Juan Pablo and Ralf, the fact that you take away 50% of your current race drivers' experience is significant, especially a guy who's been in F1 for as many years as Ralf has, so there's no doubt that that's a negative."