Ross Brawn Q&A

"I think people may be a little bit more relaxed. It's under their belt now, that job is done. But everyone here is fiercely competitive. The first race will go one of three ways. Either we'll be ahead, which will be fantastic, or we'll be at the same level and have some work to do, or we'll be behind and have even more work to do. Whatever happens there will be a reaction at the first race which will have the maximum effort and support from the group as always. Maybe we'll need that first race to find the reference points again."



"In retrospect, I don't think we had as strong competition in that period as we have now. We had the tragedies in 1994, and in '95 Williams didn't do a great job. I think we've got much tougher competition now. Last year McLaren had a bad start to the season, and people say that was the reason why they didn't win the championship. But then we had such a dreadful middle. You never quite know where you are going to be at the start of the season. You only need one or two things that are not functioning properly and it makes the first few races difficult. But a season isn't the first few races."



"I don't think the previous season has any great influence on winning another one. There's nothing that happened last year which is going to affect this year in the sense that it's let's start again, this is a new championship. I think the Michelin factor will come into it; there are going to be a few races where Michelin will get it spot on, and that will make it a little bit different. Last year if McLaren didn't score points we did, and if we didn't score McLaren did. It was a slightly different championship in that sense, and particularly in the constructors' it can go up and down like a yo-yo. The swings in the points were quite severe at times. I don't think that will be the case so much this coming season, so that will be a factor."



"I really can't see it being polarised around the two teams, as it was in 2000. There are a number of factors. One is that Williams have got their second year with the BMW engine, and I'm sure that's going to be a good improvement over what they had before. I'm sure Williams are going to be very strong."



"It will for a while. At the beginning of the season you might see a little bit of disparity. But when everyone sees what everyone else has done a little way into the season it will be corrected again. It depends if anyone has done anything special around the safety structures and so on. They are the things that are difficult to change quickly. If someone's got a very clever solution on the front wing, you'll see that at other teams within a very few races. So it tends to all come back again. New regulations can split the field a bit, it's true. It's a curious set of regulation changes, although not as fundamental as other changes have been in the past. It's an aerodynamic change really, with the higher front wing and the limitation on the rear wing sizes. So the team hasn't had to work out new weight distribution, and things like that. I don't know how much it will affect things. I think most people's cars are going to be approaching the same level as last year's - the new rules have basically killed a year's development."



"In retrospect you can look at these things and analyse them and kind of understand what goes on. We had such a great start to the season, partly because they weren't finishing. At Imola we beat them in a straight race, and that was encouraging. Then we took the knock at Monaco, when everything was fairly well sewn up. Then we had a few difficult races. Obviously at Magny-Cours we were off the pace. They were definitely quicker and their tyre durability was better than ours. That alerted us to a problem that we had seen a little bit in the first few races, but because they weren't finishing, hadn't been so apparent. The conclusion we came to was that with some of the modifications we'd made over the winter, particularly with rear suspension and some other settings, they had been good because in fact it generated a bit of extra tyre temperature. But that extra tyre temperature started to hurt us when we were getting to tracks like Magny-Cours when tyre temperature was so critical."



"Yes, in qualifying we were often able to beat them. But come the race we had less durability in the tyres. We then had a pretty intense programme to understand what we had to do to improve that, and it did improve. By a third of the way through the season we were in much better shape on that, and it showed. It still wasn't great, and because of the nature of the tyre regulations the rears are the ones that will nearly always be on the limit. Preserving the rear tyres and making them last as long as they can is going to be super critical as long as these tyre regulations remain. Whoever does the best job of it will have that extra consistency in the race. That was something we had to come to terms with and fix, which we did, and of course Michael's two incidents. It was partly because of poor qualifying performance, for one reason or another. If you're on the front row it's a bit easier."



"Yes. I think in any of those races we were in a position to have a good go at winning, so to be out at the first corner was a blow. Although it was a very unusual race in Hockenheim, you could see in various parts of the race that Rubens was very strong. So the car was good there as well, but Michael didn't have an opportunity to explore it. I think both those races would have been good for us. We had this problem with tyre temperature. I wouldn't describe it as panic, but a bit of anxiety crept in at the middle of the season. Funnily enough we were probably trying a bit too hard. And then we calmed it down a bit, in all quarters - drivers, engineers and team - and said let's use what we have to the best ability we have in as simpler as way as possible."



"No, in fact it was before Spa. Spa was a bit unfortunate. We took a little bit of a chance on settings for the race, and it almost worked out. But we were just too slow down the straight. You could see in various parts of the race that Michael was very quick. If conditions had gone one way we could have won the race quite comfortably, but as it was it went the other way. Michael was a bit defenceless in terms of straightline speed. So Spa was actually quite a good race for us, although we didn't win it. To me it was the beginning of the comeback."



"The spin basically enabled Michael to catch up all the time he lost at the beginning. Michael was catching him very quickly, and then the spin came and Michael got past him. Those were perfect conditions for us because it was a bit damp and greasy. Then we just got pipped at the end. So I wasn't too disappointed with Spa; it was the race where we thought they would have the biggest advantage, and as it turned out in the race, partly because of the settings we chose and the settings they chose, we almost won the race that we hadn't expected to be so strong in.



"Imola was a good win, because we chased Hakkinen hard for quite a long time there, and managed to get past. Obviously Suzuka was very special. Everybody in the team just did a great job that weekend. You can imagine the pressure on the mechanics in that last pit stop! They knew it was going to be tight, and they knew they had to do a perfect job, and they did. Remember in Barcelona we had the incident with Nigel (Stepney), and we had a guy standing in on refuelling who'd never done it before. He did a great job. The team is very strong, and Suzuka was an excellent race."



"They were two guys who had such a lot to go for. The others were just playing supporting roles, weren't they? That extra bit that drives you, as I was talking about earlier with the team, also pushes the drivers. David and Rubens are very good drivers, but they weren't in the same race that day. Mika and Michael took it to a different level. Hockenheim was also special because it was Rubens' first win, but it was such an unusual race. A lot of people say you were lucky because a lunatic went on the track, and there was rain and everything, but we were faced with the same set of conditions as everyone else. We managed to make it work for us, and other people didn't. That was quite pleasing, really."