Paul, can I start with you, and welcome back. Can we recap? We saw what happened at Silverstone, we know the changes that have been introduced with the tyres. Logistically, how big a challenge has that been for Pirelli? Also, tell us the reasoning behind the changes here and at future races this season?
Paul Hembery: Just to recap, at Silverstone we'd underestimated the impact of swapping the tyres. The cars were two, maybe three seconds quicker this year. Whilst we'd allowed the teams to do that, we'd underestimated the impact on the tyre. When you swap them around that creates a point with the metallic belt that we have on it, on the left-hand side, the camber side, and that created the weakness. We got that wrong and we needed to get it right going forward. So making changes, coming here the metallic belt has changed to an aramid belt, which is something the teams tested briefly in Canada. And going forward further again, we'll introduce the 2012 structure with this year's compounds for subsequent races. Logistically, yes, very, very tough. Obviously back-to-back races and our team in Izmit in Turkey have performed a few miracles, working flat out, as you can imagine, to get here, ready to race this weekend.
Can you put a figure on the amount of tyres you've had to produce in the 48 hours?
PH: I think it was about 1000, something like that. We had a few maybe in stock but we had to produce them. But they work very well and we have to give a lot of credit to them.
Pat, a difficult morning for you and one half of the garage at Ferrari. What was the problem with Fernando's car and how much did you lose by the lack running?
Pat Fry: Well, I think every time your car doesn't get out on the track you lose out really. We had a reasonably full aero programme that we effectively had to give up on. We did a little in the afternoon but nowhere near as much as we wanted to. It's just one of those silly little electrical problems. It takes you a while to work what's wrong and by the time you do it just takes too long to sort out.
Do you feel Ferrari have lost performance with recent developments and upgrades and if so how easy it to fix that decline?
PF: It is a development race all through the year isn't it. We've brought some good upgrades and there's some that have been a little bit more temperamental that we're trying to understand. So again you would have seen there were different specs of car running here again in each side of the garage in the morning and in the afternoon.
Tom, if we can turn to you. Silverstone was your third points finish of the season. It's a vastly different situation at Sauber to last year. What exactly is the problem?
Tom McCullough: Well obviously last year we started the year very strongly, scored a lot of points at the start of the season and moving to the end of the year we weren't quite as competitive on a regular basis. The start of this season has moved us a couple of positions in the team ranking from a competitiveness point of view and that very quickly drops you out of the points. So as opposed to fighting in the points, you're just dropping out of the points. We're working very hard with the car to improve it to try to get back into the points-scoring positions on a more regular basis.
sign in