Q & A with Jonathan Palmer

Jonathan Palmer: I'm really pleased. It looks good, it's well presented, the team has done a great job. For a new championship, to look at how well it has run for a first event, I think anyone would have to say that it's pretty impressive.

It has been a tense week, of course, and there is a sense of relief. It was terrific to see Max Mosley and Patrick Head here, and I think it's fair to say they were pretty impressed. I'd be surprised if people were not impressed by it.

To have the first 15 cars within one second in qualifying was impressive, it's clear that there is a high calibre of driver right throughout the field. The people that you would have expected to be at the front are, but there's no reason any of them can't jump up there.

It's very exciting to see drivers hook it up and get results out of nowhere. They don't have the luxury or the handicap, depending on your situation, of a team's performance bracket keeping them in a small window. There's no comfort zone, if you get a good lap you could be right up there, if you don't you can drop a long way down.

To be able to see the level of data on the fastest car, I think some drivers found that pretty sobering. If you can see that the other guy can do it, with the same equipment, there is no magic to it. It's just down to them to do it and there are no excuses to hide behind if they don't.

If a driver is with, say Fortec Motorsport in Formula Renault, he might end up thinking he's better than he really is. Here, you can see the scope to improve and you know exactly where you are so the drivers will raise their games further. The grid will only get closer from here.

Q. Were you pleased with the reliability of the cars?

JP: There have been some mechanical failures, not many, and of course we strive to have none. I really feel the pain of it - more so than in a championship where you have teams preparing and running their own cars - you hate to let people down. We will strive to have 100 per cent reliability and I think we'll get pretty close to it.

But the problems, a fuel pump on Andy Soucek's car, Milos Pavlovic had a loose earth wire and Edoardo Piscopo a broken wastegate. Three minor problems with 25 cars over three days is a pretty good record for the first event.

Q. Are there any areas you've signalled out for improvement?

JP: Of course, I've got a list full. But they are all just minor tweaks, we haven't had any significant problems. For example, we need to have electric wheel wrenches because they would halve the time it takes to get all four tyres changed during a qualifying session. And we will have those in time for Brno.

Q. Why was the plan to have pitstops scrapped for Valencia, do you still plan to introduce them?

JP: We wanted to get through this first weekend without the added complication of pitstops. We've never done them before and it was just one extra complication that we didn't need for this round. We'll adjust a few things for Brno and pitstops might be one of them, we haven't made the decision yet.

We were pretty conservative in a few areas for the start and there will be improvements to come, and performance increases in the car I'm sure.