Could you give us some sort of idea of progress with V8 engines and/or V8-engined chassis? How are things going – just some sort of indication.
Willy Rampf: We don’t have any experience with the V8s, because we haven’t done any testing with a V8 in our current chassis.

When do you expect to be able to have a V8?
WR: The target is that for the winter testing we prepare one car, an interim car with the V8 engine.

And when can you have that? Early December?
WR: Yes, exactly.

When do expect to get a mock-up V8?
WR: I think we will get a mock-up V8 fairly soon, because we need it to prepare the installation in our current chassis.

What about you Günther? A bit the same, really?
Günther Steiner: Maybe a little bit different situation because as we get the Ferrari engine next year, they are doing a lot of the work on the engine. We start with the chassis, we get information data to make the car for it, but the main testing of the engine will be done by Ferrari, and I think they will be running soon with the V8 in a car, and we will get the information.

When will you get your own engine?
GS: We are not sure. We will get our own engine in October, November for our car, but our car will not be ready until the end of the year so we may run at the end of the year or the beginning of next year and that is what we’re working towards.

Geoff Willis: Well, we’ve been working on the V8 for some eight months now, and Honda are very advanced on that programme. As you probably know, we had the V8 in a test chassis in Mugello earlier this year. That was the first prototype; we have a number of steps of prototypes evolving towards the final race spec. They are already on the dyno, several stages and like many people we will be testing the V8 again on the track at the beginning of the winter testing in an intermediate chassis. On the chassis side, there are a number of changes to the overall layout of the car with a much shorter engine, but that said, (it is a) normal chassis design schedule and we are quite a long way through that already.

Martin Whitmarsh: Our V8 is running on the steady state dyno and is moving on to the transient dynos, so it’s early days but I think we are very comfortable as to where that programme is. We are building an interim car which probably in seven or eight weeks’ time will start to run and test. The definitive car will be available during the winter. I think the programme is an interesting one, obviously. I think all the concerns about the sound of them will be unfounded, they sound great, they sound just as exciting as the engines we have today. So I think the V8 engine is, as Geoff said… some of the designers say there are quite a lot of interesting opportunities in the chassis and I am sure in all the teams now the designers are going through all the various situations to find out how they can exploit those extra ninety millimetres.

Sam Michael: We ran the V8 for the first time the last time we were in Jerez a couple of weeks ago. We did a limited programme just over a course of two days. We obviously collected first sets of data and any problems that could occur with that engine.

Which V8?
SM: That was a BMW V8 that we ran two weeks ago.

So you are already testing that engine, even though you may not be running it.
SM: That’s right, yeah. That’s not really finalised yet. All we can say is that we’ve got some good options for Williams’s future and we’re not really in a position where we can talk because we haven’t finished negotiations on that. But in terms of back to your original question which was ‘have we run V8s?’ the answer is ‘yes we have.’

Another slightly controversial subject, that of Jenson Button; what’s your take on that?
SM: From our point of view we have a contract with Jenson for 2006 onwards. We have contracts with quite a lot of drivers for next year in terms of our options, so we are comfortable with what we will end up with and that is all we can say on that at the moment.

And what kind of progress are you making on the current chassis?
SM: On the FW27, we’ve spent a lot of time in the wind tunnels and in the Jerez test again, but particularly the wind tunnels over the last three or four weeks. We have made some good progress, we have got some more parts here again this weekend and we’ve got two or three things coming over the next couple of races. But so far it’s going good, obviously you can’t return to the front overnight as everyone realises but we have got our heads down and we are pushing as hard as we can to get back up there.