Ron Dennis Q&A
David Coulthard scored his first points of the season in Brazil, but overall it was a frustrating day for McLaren. Both DC and Kimi Raikkonen were overtaken by the Renaults on the run to the first corner, and thereafter spent half the race behind them. They were unable to get a better run into the only real passing place at Turn One in part because they were running slightly heavier fuel loads, but also one assumes because the Mercedes V10 doesn't have as much grunt as the team would like. Once they got in clear air the silver cars were quicker, but by then it was too late. Nevertheless Ron Dennis remains optimistic about the chances of the team being able to compete with Ferrari and Williams
"I'm pretty impressed by the performance of Michael. They did a good job, and they deserved to win. At least they didn't have the level of dominance that was anticipated from the new car, so that's something. I think for both Williams and ourselves that there's more to come from the tyres, and certainly in three or four races from now we'll be a lot stronger."
"I think it's beatable, and some people were portraying it as unbeatable. Time will tell."
"He had a drive hub failure - possibly something that took place in the pit stop, but we're not quite sure yet."
"Work harder. What else? It's the only thing that fixes things."
"I think we have a very, very competitive chassis."
"The lap times were the same once we'd past the Benetton. I don't see that as a big performance disadvantage. There is a gap, but until you win races everybody considers you to be uncompetitive, and that's the way it should be."
"I doubt it."
"I think they did a competent job, they had better starts than we had, and at the end of the day the nature of F1 at the moment is that you've got to have such a performance advantage to get past. It's not that easy."
"I didn't see the incident clearly enough to have an honest opinion."
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