Sep 12
7
Formula One representatives Paul Hembery (Pirelli), David Greenwood (Marussia), Mattia Binotto (Ferrari), Ross Brawn (Mercedes) and Paddy Lowe (McLaren) met the media on Friday of the Belgian Grand Prix weekend at Spa-Francorchamps. The discussion ranged from the cool, wet weather in Belgium to the championship prospects for the teams.
Here is the official transcript of the gathering, as provided by the FIA:
Friday Press Conference Transcript
TEAM REPRESENTATIVES – Paul HEMBERY (Pirelli), David GREENWOOD (Marussia), Mattia Binotto (Ferrari), Ross BRAWN (Mercedes), Paddy LOWE (McLaren).
MODERATOR: Paul, are these ideal conditions and temperatures for you at Spa? Seriously, looking at temperatures though, this combination of dry tyres is the same as we had in Malaysia and Monza, which you can imagine would be similar temperatures to each other and this here is pretty cold.
Paul Hembery: I think you have a situation here where the temperature can change very rapidly here. We can easily have 25-30 degrees [celsius] and you can obviously have what we have today 11 degrees [celsius] and full rain. We do have a limitation on the choices, we have four compounds to choose for the season and sometimes you’re maybe a little bit more compromised than you’d like to be. Having said that, the harder tyre will work reasonably well in cooler conditions. If it gets near 15 degrees that will be right at the lower end of the area we’d like to working at. Here the challenge is normally for integrity reasons – the loadings on the tyre, which are our real challenge.
What about the rest of the season? People have talked a great deal about how unpredictable the championship has been. Has there been a policy change? Are you going to stay very much with the way the choice has been so far this year?
PH: Yeah, pretty much so. We’re certainly not making any changes to the tyres. Last year we did make a few changes during the season. This year, because it’s so close with 10ths of a second between the teams, it would be wrong for us to have changed anything because if one team had started then maybe performing better we would have been accused of favouritism. So we’ve had to leave it. The choices probably going through to the end of the season are pretty logical now and I’m sure the teams will guess what’s used.
Have you been happy with the way things have gone so far?
PH: Yes, absolutely. It’s been an exciting season. I’m sure the headaches for the technical guys here have been quite big. But
Articles are gathered and rebroadcast from public feeds: source: http://www.autoweek.com/article/20120831/F1/120839961
