Guest Questioner: Steve Cooper.

Q: Just a general question to all of you, it is a topic at the moment. The typhoon has been uprated to a super typhoon. What preparations are you making for tomorrow and possibly for Sunday? How it will affect qualifying? how you would like to see qualifying re-scheduled if tomorrow is cancelled and how prepared you are to deal with an extreme weather situation as we are facing at the moment?
David Richards: I think the first thing is, I notice everyone is stocking up with sandwiches and Alpen bars and booking the Log Cabin for lunch tomorrow! Clearly it is an unfortunate situation, more thinking of the fans actually out there, the poor people that have actually sat in the grandstands today and didn't see much action, and of course I suspect that if things carry on the way they are probably tomorrow will be completely cancelled so it's a bit concerning. It leads on to qualifying of course and what we do for qualifying is the next issue. It's all very well coming up with random ideas but it's got to be fair for everybody and it is a fairly decisive point in the championship for many teams, so we can't have anything that is unfairly biased towards anyone. I suspect there are three solutions. I think the first solution is to cram both qualifying sessions into Sunday morning, which hopefully the organisers can accommodate. If they can't then clearly one qualifying session would have to be based on perhaps the last result but in reverse order, as if it were the second session, so you would start with the race result and the winner of the last race would go last. Alternatively a grid position based on the finishing position of the last race might be the final solution to that, but I would suspect one of those would be fairest.

Paul Stoddart: I think firstly again, for the fans, they are the biggest losers out of this. The teams will survive I'm sure. We will batten down the hatches and make the most of tomorrow if we are running and if we're not running, then, as David said, Sunday will become a bit of a lottery. I am sure we will squabble over what the final outcome is going to be as to whether or not we go for reverse grid, we go for championship order, we go for last race or, indeed, we take Bernie's idea and draw lots out of a hat, but one way or another we will come up for a grid for Sunday's race and lets hope the aftermath of the typhoon doesn't interfere with Sunday's race because I think it's bad enough if we don't have qualifying tomorrow but if we also have to have a very poor or indeed an aborted race, I think that would be even worse for the fans.

Peter Sauber: There are a lot of possibilities. I think if we started to think about it immediately then two weeks later we would have a solution. (Laughter)

PSt: Two years, Peter!

Q: Tsomita-san, perhaps you have more experience of these conditions in Japan. Will a typhoon last for several days or will it be over by Sunday? Will it be safe to drive on Sunday?
Tsutomu Tomita: My opinion is quite similar to David's - I do hope that we will cancel tomorrow and on Sunday morning we will have qualifying and then after two thirty or three thirty or four o' clock we will start racing. This climate is quite abnormal in Japan because currently October is our most fine month! (Laughter) And therefore I want to apologise to you. (Laughter) But nobody can control the climate.

Q: Peter, perhaps employing Jacques Villeneuve for next season after Shanghai doesn't seem to be such a good idea. Are you worried or do you have any regrets about signing him up for two years now?
PSa: After Shanghai? It is nothing to do with Shanghai. I think it was the right decision to drive with him for him and for us too.

Q: There was a test scheduled with Vitantonio Liuzzi which was arranged before you signed Jacques but took place after you'd signed him. It seemed quite confusing that you were arranging a test with Liuzzi for possibly a race drive. What was the logic there?
PSa: We promised him that he could do a test after a successful Formula 3000 season and I think it was okay to do it. It was nice for him to drive for one day in a Formula One car. On the other hand it was very difficult to show his talent for only one day testing. But I think overall the test was very good.