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Post-race Q&A with Jean Todt

NEWS STORY
01/10/2006

Definitely after qualifying yesterday and the weather forecast of today, we are more than delighted by the final result. We know that wet conditions at the moment is not the best for us and when Michael was sixth after the fantastic qualifying and due to the change of engine of Felipe's, 20th on the grid, with our major competitors in first and second position, I was more calculating how many points we would lose considering that Michael was two points behind before the race and Ferrari was three points ahead. And finishing this race in China with Michael taking the lead in the Drivers' championship - when I say taking the lead because he's leading the championship with the same amount of points but seven wins against six and Ferrari being one point behind in the Manufacturers, we can be very happy. There are two races to go, we know our races can be unpredictable, but we must not forget where we were after the Montreal Grand Prix in the Manufacturers and the Drivers championship. We have very strong competitors to fight with, but we have demonstrated that we are very tight and hard competitors to fight with as well, so it would be interesting but I would not allow me to make some prediction about the final result. We will see.

Michael did a great race, the team did a fantastic job. Felipe drove a very good race. Unfortunately he could not get the advantage of it because he damaged the suspension when he had the incident with Coulthard but he had been doing a great job supporting the team to help Michael to chose when to put the dry tyres on, so it has been very good teamwork as usual.

Jean, were you concerned at all during the race by the way Renault appeared to be trying to block Michael coming through, trying to block Michael coming through, running two cars side-by-side down the straight?
Jean Todt: It has been a good learning for us. We have learned what you can do. We learn what we can do inside and we learn from what the others do so it's always interesting.

Do you think those tactics were unusual?
JT: It's up to you to judge, if they were usual or unusual. We have just taken that into consideration.

Did you have any engine worries after Felipe Massa's problem in Friday, particularly given the next two races?
JT: Unfortunately we cannot guarantee 100 percent reliability. We have been quite reliable, probably not as much as I wish we could have been all through the season, but I must say Coulthard finished the second race with the same engine specification today. We did many long runs with the same specification of Felipe's engine so we will be sending the back the damaged parts to Maranello to have a metalogical analysis and we should have further information next week.

Did you think the championship would be this close at this stage of the year?
JT: We always feel that until mathematically things are possible, we are going to fight, so let's say we knew we were strong, we were strong from the beginning of the season. Often we did not take the opportunity or we didn't do the perfect job to take it and we have improved the situation since a few races and we knew that since a few races that we could fight but until the race has happened you never know what will be the evolution of the race. When we speak sometimes, if one is finishing first always, eight races to go, sixteen points, the other one… you know it never happens like that.

Do you think this year has been as tough a championship battle as you have known in the past ten years?
JT: I would not say so. We have had championships… '97, '98, '99, all the championships were lost in the last race except '99 for the Manufacturers' championship which we won at the last race. So, I would say we have been fighting for the championship since '97 except 2005 where we did a bad season, but otherwise… and then some seasons were very tough, some seasons were a bit more comfortable. Let's say this one is tough but we are still fighting.

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