Friday Press Conference

Q: (Alex Popov RTR) Its about the first Russian Grand Prix next year. We have a new date of 5 October. Beat has just been in Sochi just one week. But the question is for all of you. Whats your impression, what are your thoughts about this first Russian Grand Prix. Which difficulties do you expect from this?

Zehnder: I can comment on the facilities on the Olympic Park and its very, very nice there. The track looks nice and all the new buildings that are set up its fantastic.

Q: You were there last week?

Zehnder: Ive been there last weekend, yes, for a demo event. Its a little bit windy.

Q: Andy, what sort of thing will you do? Will you do a reconnaissance? Have you been there already?

Stevenson: We havent been there yet but Im sure we will do a reconnaissance before its time for us to get there but we and certainly I always look forward to new events: the new challenges, the new tracks, to find out our way around. There are a lot of circuits that we go to year in, year out. I dont want to say thats boring but its much of the same each year so Im always excited when we have a new venue.

Q: Graham, what sort of problems to you envisage, what special demands may come from racing in Russia?

Smith: Well, hopefully theres no problems. Generally FOM are pretty good at paving the way for us to get our equipment in and out of the country. Theres always small issues with the new races that come up when you arrive but generally hopefully itll go alright.

Q: Ron, are you planning a reconnaissance trip?

Meadows: Well certainly do a recce, though Im not sure what date that will be but were really excited to go to Russia weve never been as a team, its a very interesting country and recently had a driver in Formula One and hopefully soon will have some more.

Q: Massimo?

Rivola: Yeah, the same. And in addition, we have a sponsor in Russia so were very keen to do that. To be honest, any time there is a new race venue we always keen to exploit the new chances that come up and collect more sponsorship. Its good to go to new places.

Q: Dickie?

Stanford: Well be doing a recce at some stage early in the year. Ive been to Moscow to do an event there and thoroughly enjoyed that. Im sure the teams will enjoy the new race.

Q: (Kate Walker) Question for all of you. You touched on the logistics of adding in-season testing but were looking at a possibly 22-race calendar next year. Adding the in-season testing to the far-away pre-season tests plus the longer calendar, what kind of headache is that going to be for you logistically but also financially?

Meadows: Logistically its obviously going to be more of a challenge than this year but the biggest issue at the moment looks like being the triple-header. So we need to speak to FOM but in FOM we have a fantastic partner who arranges all the logistics. They do a fantastic job so if they think its achievable it must be achievable because theyve never failed us yet. And as far as the financial aspect, its give and take really. It opens up more doors. We probably will spend a bit more on logistics but were going to get to see people in Russia, go back to Austria, were going to go to Mexico and it opens up a lot more doors for sponsors, drivers, team members.

Q: Massimo, is that the major concern for you? The triple-header?

Rivola: To be honest Im still hoping we come back to the 20 races as per the current sporting regulation. We will see. At the moment the calendar is not the best calendar possible in terms of logistics. So, even the first race in Australia, alone, is not ideal. From the logistics side I would prefer to stop and do a race in a back-to-back coming back from Australia. For sure there are some good commercial reasons behind this that I am not aware of but we will see. When the calendar is 100 per cent fixed we will manage it.

Q: Dickie?

Stanford: Yeah, the triple-header is looking a bit interesting! But Im sure well find a way around it. We always do.

Q: Beat?

Zehnder: For us the biggest headache is definitely personnel because we as a small team, we have to cover all races, tests and even demo events with the same number of people, the same crew. The more events you have, obviously the more difficult it gets. Then the triple-header I think we would have to start packing up on Saturday in Monaco to make it to Jersey.

Q: Andy?

Stevenson: The schedule looks very interesting and certainly challenging. As I said earlier, we like new venues and enjoy the challenge. For our team certainly the thing that we are going to find very difficult is the in-season testing. The four in-season tests are going to stretch us and thats something were not looking forward to.

Q: Graham?

Smith: I agree with Andy. Its the in-season testing thats probably going to push us to the edge. We had the meeting yesterday with the other teams and discussed the venues we were potentially going to go to. We started putting that down on a calendar and it started to look quite a daunting task. Obviously again well have to manage the personnel as best we can to achieve that. I think like all regulation or rule changes that happen in Formula One, we all start off thinking ²how are we going to do that? and year in, year out we seem to achieve it: get to the end of the year, look back, think ²OK and move on to the next year.

Q: (Alan Baldwin Reuters) I want to ask about the triple-header but more for specific detail. Monaco is a race where cars get smashed about quite a bit and you have to get them, in theory, to New Jersey within a matter of days. Could you give more details about the complications of that and also how you plan for a triple-header when one of the races may not happen?

Stevenson: We havent focussed on it too much just yet. It was only announced last week to the teams, or to the public in general, and well wait until the calendar has been ratified before we put any resource into understanding exactly how we will deal with it. As always in Formula One, if a challenge is put before us, we will make it work. So, well wait until is has been ratified.

Q: Beat?

Zehnder: Technically, it will be very difficult to have a back-to-back from Monaco to Jersey, because normally the freight will leave for Canada, lets say, on the Saturday before the race. And so thats why, if youre only able to send your freight on a Monday or a Tuesday, it compromises your weekend quite a bit.

Q: Graham, how does it affect a smaller team, something like that?

Smith: Its probably not dissimilar to everybody else. Theyve still got to pack their pallets and pack their cars up and move their personnel around the world. So, its probably slightly more challenging but were all in the same boat. I think we all carry pretty similar freight weight and sea-freight and so forth. But it is difficult when the calendars not 100 per cent fixed and youre trying to pre-empt whats going to happen but the Monaco to New York does look particularly challenging

Rivola: I can say that even for a top team its something almost impossible, to be honest, to be done. But as I said, we will see the real calendar and then we figure it out.

Q: It could be said its even more difficult for a top team as you have more equipment.

Rivola: At the end, as I said, we have more freight. Its not that a top team has such a big advantage having such a back-to-back. Its going to be almost impossible to do it.

Q: (Frederic Ferret LEquipe) Dickie, you knew of the good old days when Williams were winning; how different is the mood in the team nowadays and as an old pillar of the team, how can you help and motivate all the team to bring Williams back to the top?

Stanford: Thats a difficult one! Yes, Ive seen the winning days and the current days. To motivate people as the guys were saying earlier on you look after them, you try and do your best for them. Youre still trying as hard as anybody up and down the pit lane so you just have to try and keep the guys motivated by any means possible. Theyre all there, they want to win. I think everybody in the pit lane is there for that reason.

Q: (Dieter Rencken) Gentlemen, under the old Concorde Agreement you were obviously members of the Sporting Working Group which has now been replaced by the Sporting Working Committee, which is more a discussion forum rather than one that can actually take decisions for forwarding up to the Formula One Commission. Does this change or in any way jeopardise or prejudice the decision-taking process from the sporting regulation point of view?

Rivola: I think that so far, as a group, we wont change our approach, so if we have a guideline from our team principal or the strategy group it doesnt matter, we will have the guideline. With the guideline we have we will try to sort out the best rule wording or the best rule to apply in certain conditions. I dont think it really changes (anything) too much but at the end, its just the fact that you have to be co-ordinated even better with your team principal so its part of the normal job, I would say.

Meadows: So far we havent seen any difference since we havent had the Sporting Working Group since the Concorde Agreement was signed between the FIA and FOM. So maybe ask the same question in two or three months time and see if anythings changed but so far, this year, weve been operating as previous years.

Q: How often do you actually meet?

Rivola: Six (times) per year, roughly.

Q: (Stuart Codling F1 Racing) Gentlemen, Im led to believe that it was the sporting directors who ultimately vetoed the putative Pirelli test in America. I was wondering if you could clarify what the difference is between Ferrari testing a 2011 car in Barcelona three weeks before the Spanish Grand Prix and McLaren testing a 2011 car in Austin, three weeks before the US GP? Maybe Andy you could take this as we understand that Force India rounded up the posse?

Stevenson: I would like to take it on, yeah. We had absolutely nothing to do with it. I believe it was an FIA decision. The first I knew that it wasnt going to happen was when McLaren told us that the FIA had notified them that they werent happy with the test.

Meadows: We read about this morning in Autosport. There was no discussion yesterday at our meeting.

Zehnder: I think the difference was that we didnt know about the Ferrari test. At the time.

Q: (Dieter Rencken) The two responses that I had about my question came from teams whose principals are actually on the Strategy Working Group whereas the others are now excluded entirely from that input because their team principals are not on the Strategy Group. So how do you people in the back row, for example, feel about it?

Smith: I can only vouch for what Ive seen so far which is that we still have our meetings that weve been having for the last few years in the same format. We proposed a question to Charlie (Whiting) individually about where we stand going forward and hes very adamant that our meeting will continue in the same vein, helping to structure the sporting regulations going forward into 2014/2015. Most of the rules that are in for next year have been decided through the same group. Obviously, as Ron said, well give it three months and see what happens but at the moment, its continuing as it was. Yeah, clearly we dont have the voice at the strategy table but well hopefully get people to use common sense in the right direction.

Zehnder: Well of course were still meeting on a regular basis and we have a voice and sometimes we have to maybe raise our voices and to speak up, not that one side of the paddock is going to sleep. We, as a group, have to work out proposals which will be accepted or not by the Strategy Group.

Stevenson: I think for me it has changed quite a bit and certainly from our point of view, since the Monaco agreement was signed, things have been very different this year and I think carrying on into next year its going to be the same. I dont think the process is as good as it used to be and certainly for the smaller teams, we dont have as much say as we used to.

Zehnder: But the problem there obviously is that in the absence of a Concorde Agreement we have a simple majority vote at the moment and so its not what it used to be with the 70 percent majority or unanimity.

Q: (Chris Lyons AP) Ron, you said there was a meeting yesterday regarding in-season testing. Are there any changes you can update us on? What details can you give us on that?

Meadows: We did schedule some dates for next season for in-season testing but we need to speak to Charlie Whiting first to get clarification that hes happy so I think well let Charlie announce them.

Q: (Kate Walker) I wanted to get back to the sexy subject of logistics and finance and in-season testing because Ive been told that its going to cost about an extra ten million a year on the teams budget but also youve got the problem of rebuilding a car post-race, doing the test and then rebuilding it to send it off to the next race. To what extent is that actually going to be possible, especially for those teams with smaller budgets who are finding it a bit hard at the moment?

Stanford: Actually rebuilding the car after a race or test actually doesnt make any difference. We tend to do that now between the double-header races so its not going to make that much difference. On a flyaway, after the race, you strip the car down, you rebuild it on Sunday night before you pack it up to go to the next race. In Europe, youll strip it down, rebuild it completely and then send it to the next race. On costings of the extra races, we dont know yet. We havent costed anything out. The calendars only been out for a week and so we havent got that far.

Rivola: Well, I wouldnt employ the guy that told you ten millions more for a few tests. To be honest, I dont think its going to be like that. To be honest, I think its going to be more efficient, in general, for testing, but obviously if you have more flyaway races, that would cost (more) because of the freight costs but thats not a huge difference.

Meadows: Its obviously going to cost more than this year because we didnt have any in-season testing, we just had filming days but I think youre going to have a bigger bang for your buck, youre not going to be driving to some airfield in north Yorkshire, hoping its not raining. Youre going to be going to Barcelona and doing 500 kilometers of useful testing.

Stevenson: We think there is going to be quite a large cost implication, especially in the way that we run our team and with the resources we have available to us now, it wont be possible for us to attend the four tests as planned. We have brought to the table other options, cheaper options that wouldnt give us an advantage but they couldnt be agreed so were either left with the choice of attending the test or not attending the test. Weve put calculations together that we would estimate around eight million for us to attend the four tests.

Zehnder: I think the difference is the different points of view. Obviously the eight in-season test days are replacing four straightline tests or aero tests, three young drivers and six out of the eight PR days but we, as a small team, weve hardly done any straightline tests we have a fantastic 1:1 wind tunnel which is as good as a straightline test. Weve done the three days young driver test and every year weve done one PR day to get rights-free footage. Obviously if you do eight PR days and possibly straightline tests its going to be more expensive and for us its definitely I wouldnt say a killer but its going to be much more expensive than we were used to over the last three years.

Q: (Alan Baldwin Reuters) Just for a matter of interest, on the calendar and I suspect I probably know the answer already but does Mr Ecclestone consult you guys on the calendar for your input on logistics or does it just come out of the blue as a fait accompli and you have to deal with it?

Stanford: No, he doesnt consult us. Whether he consults team principals I dont know, we wait until we see the calendar before we know whats going on.

Rivola: No, we are not involved in that.

Q: (Ted Kravitz Sky Sports) Just back to the pre-season testing for next year, the second and third tests will be in Bahrain. What concerns, if any, do you have on both the working conditions a lot of guys having to work all day in very hot conditions and on general safety and security?

Zehnder: Were here to organise events and to organise them as well as possible but whether we should go there or not is political and I am not here to do politics.

Rivola: I think we should get a little bit of mileage on our new engine so Bahrain is a venue where you normally have good weather so that was the priority. The priority was to go to the Middle East; to chose Abu Dhabi or Bahrain was not a matter for us.

Stevenson: Again, the same as Beat. I dont think were here to comment on the politics, but as far as the test venue and for pre-season testing with the new power units, I really couldnt think of a better place to go. The temperatures arent going to be that hot, were probably going to expect 22/23 degrees at that time of the year, and its actually a very good way of bringing the crews up to the speed, ready for a hard season so I think that the dates that are scheduled are pretty good.