Ron, I'm sure Ron Dennis would love to explain the reason that the water pistols are on the desks.
Ron Dennis: This is the consequence of actually saying to a journalist ‘this is off the record, this conversation is off the record.' I suggested a whole range of things that could bring some humour into motor racing and I said on Fridays, the drivers could walk the circuit with the journalists. The journalists would find it very interesting if they were told that there are lines and other different aspects of driving round. I said you could even put humour into it by giving them water pistols to use as they went round, and of course, inevitably, when you are taken out of context, there is always a bit of twist put to it. Not all the ideas were so silly, but it was an amusing exchange that was definitely off the record and of course, as always, there's no such thing.

Nick Fry (whose water cannon has been squirting water for several seconds): This one's got premature ejaculation, Ron.

RD: You should know about it. You should know about it. There's a reserve water tank under here, actually. (Much laughter).

NF: Doesn't work!

A question for Ron and Nick: you were both pre-season favourites. How do you feel you've done so far, what is lacking?
RD (to Nick): It's a more difficult question for you.

NF: You can have time to think about it. It's age, Ron. You need more time. Could do better, I think is probably where we are. We're trying to beat the best of the best. I still think that there are four teams which were probably the same teams at the start of the season which have a chance: clearly Renault and Ferrari and I think McLaren and ourselves. We've got more work to do. I'll be interested to hear what Ron says, but I think he will probably think the same.

But certainly, we're nowhere near thinking about giving up. The whole secret to this is just to keep going and to persevere. We're still absolutely filled with not only good ideas but enthusiasm and passion about this and we will be totally relentless and we will get there, whether it be tomorrow, whether it will be the next day but we will get there in the end.

And the team spirit for us is incredibly good. We've got a fantastic pair of drivers and great engineers and we're learning fast and there's stuff that we didn't find out in the pre-season (tests) which subsequently we've learned more about. I think it's fair to say that we have learned more in the last two months than probably in the last two years about how to make the tyres work, but we've still got more to do, and the secret to all of this is to keep learning. If we were sitting there thinking ‘oh my Lord, what are we going to do next?' then I would be worried but that's absolutely not the case. We're sitting there with a whole bunch of things, experiments that we need to do. We know we need to improve in a whole bunch of areas. Making the tyres work with the car is clearly one of those. We've said before, our traction control system is not as good as it should be. We, like a lot of the others, have work to do on the engine and we've got work to do on the aerodynamics. We're the only big team without a full size wind tunnel and ours is coming on stream as we speak, and it's something which will certainly help us in the latter part of the series, so disappointed, absolutely. Should do better can do better and will do better.

RD: I see our position as being slightly different to Nick's. We always try to under-promise and over-deliver to everybody that we talk to, be it our drivers or our sponsors. But there is, inevitably when we had a relatively strong season last year and we were narrowly beaten to the championships, there's expectation, but the expectation is more in the media than with ourselves. We know how difficult it is to win in Formula One. We've worked hard through the winter and we had minimal ability to determine how competitive or uncompetitive we were at the start of the season and of course, we all witnessed how difficult Ferrari's start to the season was, and how difficult… and that was reflected in their testing. So our expectations were to do our best and to try to go to the first race and win it.

You look back on what is fractionally more than a quarter of the season and we know where we can improve, we know where we are not as good as we know we can be. We have two drivers who can win races. We know that. Their contribution to the process is not just to get in the car and win, but it's also to help and work with the team when you're not winning.

Of course, with the uncertainty for Juan Pablo and for Kimi, they have a choice. They have not decided where to drive and we haven't decided who's going to drive for the team other than obviously Fernando next year, and we try to respect each other's position but at the same time, as you're respecting it as regards the future, you respect it in the present and we are fiercely competitive, we want to win and we will want to win the last race as much as we want to win the first race, irrespective of where we sit in the championship.

But to write anybody off, and certainly to write McLaren off, and write Mercedes off after five races is not a particularly smart thing to do. We haven't got the strength of performance that we had this time last year but we were most certainly further behind in the points. We've had good engine reliability. The only failure we've had in a race was when we knowingly exceeded its performance parameters but that it was worth it because we were out of the points with Juan Pablo.