Ross Brawn Q&A

"It's been difficult for everyone. We don't know what developments there are in the world from here, but it will take everyone a while to recover from that sort of thing. So it has been a difficult weekend, but everyone's done the best, most professional job they can in difficult circumstances."



"Very. He is a sensitive guy, and he was shocked by what had happened. He's got a couple of young kids, and wonders about their future, like any good parent would. He's been quite shocked by it all."



"Exactly. That certainly didn't help."



"We agreed with whatever the driver felt. It would have made little or no difference to be honest with you if everyone had kept position in the first two chicanes. In fact there might be a few more people out there racing at the end if they had."



"I'm sure it did. He is a professional racing driver, but particularly as the championship was finished, he didn't have that to focus on. He was focussed on different things, and this weekend it was difficult to focus on the race. Or focus solely on the race, because he did a pretty competent job."



"It's difficult to judge. Rubens obviously had a very good race, an extremely good race. And I was particularly pleased after getting trounced at Hockenheim that we came to a power circuit and everyone thought BMW Williams would walk away it. Apart from a glitch at one of our pit stops, we might have made even more of a race of it than we did."



"No, worries about a boring race!"



"Well, Montoya didn't, and we didn't, so maybe tradition's changing."



"As I say, we'd been trounced at Hockenheim, and I didn't really see the point in following a couple of ultra quick BMWs down the straight, so we decided to try something different."



"I think what would have happened is that he would have been on the back of Montoya, but I don't know how much faster Montoya could have gone. Certainly Rubens would have been able to put some pressure on them. It seemed that when you put pressure on them, their tyres suffered. It happened with Ralf and it happened with Montoya in the middle of the race. If you could give them a hard time, then they struggled a bit. It was a shame that Rubens couldn't come out in front of Ralf and then start to give Montoya a hard time."



"We wanted to change our strategy a little bit, so we wanted to re-programme the rig. In reprogramming it, something went wrong, so it wasn't ready in time. It was our fault. When the guy was getting ready to fuel the car he could see it wasn't primed. You get an indication on the rig that the rig is ready to go, and it was still not primed when we wanted to fill the car, so we swapped rigs. As a precaution the other one is always set-up, so we just dropped back onto that one."



"We didn't quite do what we wanted to do, but the fact was we came out behind Ralf when we wanted to stay in front of him, so that's what made difference."



"You know I'm not going to tell you, so you're wasting your time! It wasn't quite what we wanted. But I don't think it made a great deal of difference in the end."



"It was very good, yes. The tyres were very good, the car was good, and we've had a nice step on the engine since Hockenheim, which has helped. So I was very pleased really. It was just one of those races where it just didn't quite work out for us."



"He blistered the second set - the left rear got a bit difficult. I think he could see he wasn't going anywhere, so rarely for Michael, he sort of sat back and watched what when on. Rubens with a two-stopper, it all worked out fine. With Michael you saw the problem of two stops. With one it was good, with the other it wasn't so good. But that was a risk we were prepared to take. The championship is finished, and we thought we'd have some fun out there today, and see what happened."



"Time helps, time always helps. But of course we've got to see what developments lie between now and then. There are a lot of logistical problems going to Indianapolis, but equally I'm sure that there's lot of Americans who want it to happen, and we've got a debt to them as well. We can't close the country down because of what's happened. They don't want to, they don't want to show that these things have such an impact. So I think we've got a debt to the American fans to do the race."