Ross Brawn Q&A

"In the past we've had problems on parade laps or running behind the safety car, and we thought it was related to the revs. You don't run the engine normally on the parade lap, so we imagined it was just going to cure itself as soon as he started the race. But it was obviously a different type of problem."



"I don't know. We've got to strip the thing down and have a look. It could be either. They are pretty complex things. It could be something mechanical which is stopping the gearchange function, or a control problem."



"Probably 150kph... I didn't see the accident properly. Luckily it was red-flagged, and then we were able to go back out again."



"At one of the chicanes Hakkinen ran in to the back of him. So we had to repair the floor, because obviously Michael had taken the T-car. We had to tape it up. It was a funny failure, where his wing had gone into the back of our undertray, and made two slits. It wasn't a structural concern."



"No. But we put a new rear wing on, just in case that had taken a knock. It was a different sort of issue, and as the race proved, it wasn't a problem."



"The valve has a mechanism that locks on when you put it on the car. And the mechanism locked on before we got on the car. It's a safety mechanism, and for some reason when we put it on, the safety mechanism was engaged. But that used to happen with the old system - it's not unique to this system. The actual valve head is virtually the same as it was in last year's system, so that problem was independent of any other recent problems people have had."



"Yes, the guys are pretty sharp. They just put it down and picked up Michael's rig, so it cost us about 10 seconds."



"He was sixth, and in all due fairness I didn't see Sauber as being that strong opposition. So why not? Unfortunately we gave the game away a little before the restart. He got past Coulthard and Hakkinen at the beginning, and Mika came over to him on the grid to apologise for hitting him, and said, 'Oh, I see you're on a two-stop. You're far too fast to be on a one-stop!' So McLaren were aware, and he didn't have the element of surprise that might have been more useful. But Rubens drove a fantastic race, a very, very good race."



"Of course. Michael knew Rubens' strategy, and there was no point in spoiling it, because it would have all balanced out in the end."



"In the normal way! [laughs...] We've got a drivers' championship to win and a constructors' championship."



"The fuel pump just broke. We'll have to take all the pieces back and see what happened."



"It shouldn't be, but it appears to be. So we've got to get on top of it and make sure it doesn't let us down again."



"I don't know to be honest. We've got to understand what's happened before we know. It would seem a curious coincidence. My first reaction was that we hadn't put any fuel in the car, but the guys confirmed that the fuel had gone in OK. We weren't absolutely sure what the problem was because our radio telemetry has got poor coverage here, as it's such a big circuit, and unfortunately he stopped in a place where we didn't have radio coverage. We tried to get in touch with him to find out what had happened, in case it was something that we had to consider for the other car, but we couldn't get in touch with him."



"That's an interesting idea!"



"I think Ferrari and Bridgestone have got some improvements to make at this sort of circuit, quite clearly. Williams, BMW and Michelin enjoyed too big an advantage here, and we've got to do something about it. Maybe it was a race of attrition, but the fact that there were four Michelin runners in the top six says something. Bridgestone has done a very, very good job, and at some tracks we're better than Michelin, and tracks likes this we're worse than Michelin. What we want of course and what Bridgestone want is to be better at every circuit. So we'll carry on working with that objective."



"Degradation wasn't bad. If you look at the lap times, the times were pretty consistent, but we just really weren't quick enough."



"Difficult to judge. Everything is a package, and Williams have been instrumental in developing the tyres, so it's probably 50-50. It's a very good car, and a very good package, and here the tyres worked really well, so they were very competitive."