Ron Dennis Q&A

"First of all it's mixed emotions. Strangely the first is the feeling for the team, which is strong, dominant performance with a perfectly executed strategy. Then there's the delight of course for Mika, who drove absolutely perfectly from beginning to end, and then of course the disappointment for David, who really had to emerge in the strongest possible position from the first corner.

They were both fighting for the same bit of road that just wasn't there. David was ahead, and so naturally from a team perspective we felt that Jarno [Trulli] should have given him the corner. But I'm sure that's not a view shared by Trulli. On the other hand of course the race is not ever won on the first corner, but it is often lost, and that was one of those moments. The driver's championship is quite clearly more difficult. It's not over, and the constructors' is a much greater open issue.

I think we have genuinely improved our performance, but not as much as the race indicated. I just think that Ferrari did a particularly bad job, and that made us look even better. Throughout at least 50% of the race the biggest problem we had was to slow Mika down. That's always something you have to do with great care, because a driver driving as quickly as possible is concentrated and focused.

To deliberately drive off the pace requires a different type of concentration, and very often can lead to mistakes. So I feel particularly pleased that we managed the race from the pit wall in a way that allowed him to convincingly win, and at the same time look after the car and tyres and engine. I don't know what more we had, but we had a great deal in hand."



"I don't think that Mika's motivation has really been anything other than close to 100%. We all go up and down by 2-3%, but I think that's one of his strengths, he's always attacked every Grand Prix weekend. I'm sure that he would have found a little bit more out of himself if he had been contending the world championship in a more serious way from a points standpoint. One thing's for sure - he'll go to every race for the balance of this season absolutely committed to winning.

That's what we need. It will contribute to helping David, if it's required, maybe even opening his own championship out if Michael has some bad results over the next two or three races [in fact Mika cannot win as he is 65 points behind with 60 available!]. But certainly it's what we need for the constructors'. We're fighting for both, but of the two that's going to be a little easier to achieve than a driver's championship for one of our drivers."



"I think the important thing is that we haven't finished all the races. I think if Michael finishes all the races, we're under no illusions that it's going to be tough, but a couple of difficult results for him and it could quickly swing into a situation where either of our drivers could win, and obviously David's in a better position than Mika."



"I don't want to be too critical of Ferrari, because it so easy for us to criticise ourselves. Motor racing is very challenging, and to be very competitive all the time is very difficult. If I had my worst weekend and finished second and third, I'd probably be pretty happy. But most certainly their strategy was completely wrong. I don't think anyone in the team would argue to the contrary, and it's a bit of a mystery to us why they even considered it."



"I think the compound family that Bridgestone is developing is particularly strong, and as they propagate that type through the rest of the season I'll think we'll be in a very strong position tyre wise. Obviously there's absolute dominance in the wet. I'm sure anyone on Michelin tyres would feel pretty uncomfortable about having to race in the wet at the moment."



"To my knowledge I don't think it required any radical car change to achieve a balance. Clearly whenever a new tyre comes in it always favours one team more than another. But I don't think there was a difference that reflected through to making life difficult for Ferrari. I think it was a very small difference. I think that they would readily admit that either they got the set-up wrong, or some other factor."



"He immediately radioed in that the car didn't feel correct. One of the positive aspects of having carbon fibre suspension is that it either breaks or doesn't break. It's not a material that bends. Therefore we didn't feel that there was any danger in him continuing. I don't yet know what was wrong with it, but it wasn't a suspension failure in the mechanical sense; it was probably something like a ruptured shock absorber or something that reacted badly to the impact. We took the view that it was not dangerous. It was just slowing the pace of the car."