Bernard, you have quite a workload this year with V10s and V8s, how is that working out?
Bernard Ferguson: It seems to be working OK so far. It's not such a huge problem with the V10, because we weren't allowed to change anything and the specification is pretty restricted so not much of a workload there. A little bit more of a workload on the V8 as you can imagine: an awful lot to do, very difficult introducing a new engine and taking it to two race weekends. I think all the engine manufacturers have found that so far.

How much are you asking Williams to do in terms of simulation, that sort of thing?
BF: Basically, most of the work we do on the specification of the engine and testing the engine has to be done on the dyno now because obviously there's a restriction on the amount of testing that one wants to do, but they have been very accommodating in so far as they've done all the tests we've needed to do, all of the different modes of running, they've been very accommodating. The drivers have been really good with us and working together brilliantly as a team.

What's the reliability situation as we come to this race?
BF: We've lost one engine in three races; that's a long way above what we're used to but we're pretty confident we're going to have a good race weekend this weekend.

Otmar, Jenson's retirement from Melbourne. How did that come about, especially pulling off before the chequered flag?
Otmar Szafnauer: Well, as you saw, it was a spectacular retirement on the last lap of Melbourne. We had no inkling of the fact that the engine was going to let go until about halfway through the last lap and then noticed some idiosyncrasies on the telemetry. We didn't know whether Jenson was going to make it or not. However, we had a feeling that something was happening. And then on the straight, when the engineers saw what happened, we just considered Jenson's safety and the safety of everyone else - I think we were half a kilometre away from the finish line when that happened - and we just told him the best thing to do was to pull over as quickly as he could and that's what he did.

Which would Honda have preferred?
OS: Well, that's hypothetical. You always prefer points because that's what we're here to do. However, you can't say that points is what you want to do over somebody's safety so the right thing to do and the thing we prefer is to have a safe conclusion to something like that.

This year, Honda has said they would support the Super Aguri team who have had phenomenal reliability, but how much is 100 percent support, which it was quoted as being.
OS: Well, it is 100 percent support from an engine perspective, so Super Aguri receive the same engines as Honda Racing F1 from Japan. We're also supporting them with some gearbox technology and we have some people from our R&D in Japan supporting them with general racing technologies and the know-how that we have. But they are definitely separate and split from Honda Racing F1 as they have different objectives and our predominant support is in engines and partly gearboxes.

Paolo, what have your feelings been about the development of the V8 so far in comparison to the V10?
Paolo Martinelli: Well, of course the V8 has been a completely new engine development, a new type of engine so it was quite tough and we have to work hard, for sure, during the season, being this is one of the first racing seasons with a V8, so we are gaining experience. I think each of us is working hard, trying to develop as fast as possible, as usual in Formula One, with a brand new engine.

Is the development pace a lot faster than it has been in the past?
PM: You can say that we have a different learning curve than we had with ten years' experience with a V10. Most of the job, or the majority of the very important or predominant factors were well known. Here, sometimes we find some new items, some new areas where you can find performance and then you have to push hard for development.

You didn't really have a great heritage in V8s, did you?
PM: Well, we used the V8 in the very far past, about 50 years ago, so basically we didn't get much experience from that in the Formula One world.

So have you been happy with the way it's gone so far?
PM: Well, in terms of development, everything is going properly. Of course, we had a reliability issue which we paid for in a severe way. In Malaysia we had a component failure. We hope to have fixed it. We have something different here in Imola and from that point, we hope to continue with our necessary search for reliability.

Rob, your engine came out relatively late in comparison to some others. Was that part of the policy and has that had an influence on the reliability since then?
Rob White: It's certainly true that I think we were the last onto the track which came about from our explicit choice not to do a hybrid car in which we put an early version of the engine into a converted car of a previous generation. This was a thing we looked at, honestly very very briefly, and figured that for us it would not be best use of our resource. We tried to set out our stall in order to make best use of the resources in the team. We looked at how to construct the project planning from the moment we knew what the rules would be until the date of the first race. We tried to build in the experiences from previous engine projects. Frankly, we did what we thought was right for our team in our context and we were, I think, reassured that it played out well for us.