Ross Brawn's 2003 Diary, Part 2

MS 5th, RB 3rd

"If you have your driver punted off when you're fighting hard for the championship, you do get frustrated. I think somebody called me a karting father! There is a certain element of truth in that I'll admit that. There are certain drivers who will carry out overtaking manoeuvres and you know that they're going to do you and you're still going to survive it. The facts show that Juan Pablo knocked a few people off this year, so draw your own judgements. It was a tough year and these things happen. We're all passionate about our sport, and sometimes it gets the better of you.

"Maybe Michael's push start was lucky, but it was a rule we knew about. The rules quite clearly gave us the right to do that, and Michael knew that. As soon as he spun he was instructed by the team and reminded that he could receive a push from that situation. Those people who wittered on about it not being correct don't know the rules. It's our job to know the rules and know where we can benefit from them. He was fortunate to get the push start and pick up the points, but maybe we were unfortunate to get knocked off."

MS 3rd, RB 7th

"We were hanging on by our fingernails at that stage. We'd had that great run in the second quarter of the season, and now we were facing a very tough challenge. Williams were starting to get their car working properly, so we had the added challenge of that. McLaren had been strong with their old car and we were having to cope with temperature conditions which were not favourable to our tyres. It was a bit of survival mode during that period of the season. We were pleased by our team performance, even if we weren't pleased by the overall results."

MS 4th, RB 1st

"Silverstone was a different picture because of the circumstances. It was interesting because of the things that happened, and people suddenly ended up on different fuel loads and different strategies. That opened up the race completely, and we saw some terrific racing that day at a track where normally overtaking is not expected. Two different tyre manufacturers with tyres that were at their peak at different stages, different strategies on the cars because of the safety cars, so it just threw the whole race in a jumble.

"Rubens was magnificent that day. It was a great performance. He got very angry at one stage because of our decisions under the safety car. He came in and our lollipop guy held him because there were cars streaming down the pit lane. It was the right thing to do, but Rubens got very frustrated and it seemed to inspire him for the rest of the race!"

MS 7th, RB retired

"We lost Rubens at the start, but I guess the consolation was that Kimi and Ralf couldn't carry on. But it was still frustrating. I think we had a very good race. Trulli complained about the passing move, but he moved across and forced Michael to take that line. He was defending an indefensible situation. Michael was looking good for second position when we suffered a puncture. We'd salvaged what looked like being a strong finish and then that happened - we don't know if the pass may have caused the failure.

"I don't think Trulli had the right to complain about that. I think we had more right to complain about his pushing Michael off the track. It was a tragedy we had that puncture. For him to salvage something out of what was a very difficult weekend is part of his make-up. Even when the car's not on the pace or the tyres aren't as strong, he still there, potentially scoring a lot of points. It's definitely one of his strengths."

MS 8th, RB retired

"The race ran very badly, and again Trulli was our nemesis in that race. We should have finished a lot higher up than we did, but we had a fuel problem in one of the pit stops when the car stopped. We had a miscalculation and Michael actually arrived in the pits with the car stopped. Luckily he rolled down the pit lane. We then had to refuel the car and get it started again, and we lost about six seconds more than we should have done. That again put Michael in a very bad position out on the track, because he came out behind Trulli and Coulthard, when we should have been in front of those guys.

"We didn't put in as good a performance as we should have done. I'm not saying we could have won the race, but we certainly could have finished in the top four or five. Driver, team, we just didn't put it together. Also in retrospect I don't think we made a good tyre choice for Hungary. I think we had better tyres available but for various reasons we didn't chose them in the test we did.

"One of the difficulties in a tyre war is you're presented with hundreds of options in terms of fitting tyres to tracks that you don't test on. So you have to make predictions and use all the information you've got to try and decide what tyre you're going to use. The temperature varies and the nature of the track varies. "

MS 1st, RB 3rd

"The great thing about Monza was that we had the test beforehand so the tyre issue should have been addressed. We were able to very carefully go through all the tyres with the race drivers and pick the best tyre for the race. Monza gave us the opportunity to at least eliminate that variable. We had the race drivers there to sort the set-up out. Then it was just down to us on the Monza weekend doing a good job as a team. We had a few discussions about what we needed to do. We didn't need to panic, we needed to work logically and methodically, and it all came together.

"The guys did a great job. Like Canada, perhaps we weren't the strongest car on the track, but we got the maximum out of our package. I felt that Montoya was very strong there, and he didn't take a race that he could have won. It was classic Ferrari - we squeaked a win. It was really encouraging because of the way we put everything together. The whole team functioned very well."

MS 1st, RB retired

"We had a very good test at Jerez where we picked the tyre for Indy and did some work for Suzuka. We could see that we could be competitive. The temperatures were getting better. Indy the weather undoubtedly helped us, with the wet conditions, because we still enjoyed a substantial advantage in the wet, so Indy was perfect in that respect. I think we would have been extremely competitive in the dry.

"Obviously we were annoyed about Rubens' situation [when he was punted off by Montoya]. Once we'd got over that little damp period, where as I say we do struggle a little bit, he would have undoubtedly been very competitive and put us in a much stronger position in the constructors;' going into the last race. People talk about Montoya's penalty, but what about the ultimate penalty, which was Rubens being put out of the race? That was not acceptable.

"Michael drove a great race and we were starting to fire on all cylinders, and our season came strong just at the right time. When he stopped the first time the tendency was to err on the conservative side and go for dries. Our weather guy said it was OK, it was just a quick shower! I'll trust what's hitting me on the top of the head next time. Michael went out and said 'No way' and we got him back in and got him on wets. Luckily our direct competition were having to do the same, because they were already out there on dries having done their pit stops. We got away with that, and I think we ran the race very well after that. Michael got 10 vital points."

MS 8th, RB 1st

"Qualifying with the weather was the first obstacle we met to scoring a few points. We got into a bit of a debate as to whether or not he should start from the pit lane, in order to avoid an accident on the start. That in itself creates more problems, because you've got to overtake more people, and that's not always straightforward. So we stayed in our original position. Everything was looking fine until Michael tangled with Sato. The race got quite challenging from thereon in!

"I think he wanted to finish with a flourish, and he obviously thought he had an opportunity to overtake Sato. When things go wrong you can the reasons why you shouldn't have done it, but at the time it seemed the right move to make. Sato was a bit of an unknown quantity to Michael because he hadn't been racing this year. He was not maybe going to be quite so aware of the drivers around him, and he'd not been the most accommodating of drivers in the past anyway.

"Again the guys did a great job in the pits, so we got back out again, and modified our strategy a little bit to cope. We were still looking OK for the point, and then he got involved in a few manoeuvres with his brother! But we came home with the one vital point. Luckily, Rubens did a fantastic job all weekend, and put it on pole by quite a wide margin. I began to wonder if we'd been a little adventurous on the fuel levels, but once the race started at the first stops it became obvious that we weren't that far out of line with our competitors.

"Rubens had a fantastic race and did the job for us, but my big fear was that there would be a shower towards the end of the race. Kimi might have got past Rubens and Michael succumbed to one of the Michelin runners behind him. There was some dampness in the air - Rubens had a problem with his visor misting up - but luckily it didn't come to anything."