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Belgian GP: Friday Press Conference

NEWS STORY
28/08/2009

Question to all of you. We see vastly varying performances from your cars from weekend to weekend. Or it seems that way. Are you happy with the consistency of your car and, if not, what is the problem? Where is the inconsistency? Adam, would you start? For example, your two cars were virtually at the bottom of the time sheets today.
Adam Parr: Well, actually this year I think we have been very pleased with our performances. It has been much more consistent than in previous years. Today has been a bit of a set back and we obviously need to do some serious work to put on a more competitive performance tomorrow afternoon. But so far this season has been much more consistent.

Is there any idea what was happening?
AP: Today? Well, I hope someone has got an idea. But we are in the debrief right now, so hopefully we will know a lot more later on.

Simon, what about you?
Simon Roberts: Well, I think that this year everything is a lot closer, so as teams move from race to race we are finding it really difficult to guess where we are going to be. That's happened to us this afternoon. Like Adam we are in the debrief now looking at the data. I think with the tyres we thought that the softs would be the tyre to be on. We could get it to work early on but later on in the session we were not so sure. I think it is good in a way. Everyone changes a bit race to race and even small increments in performance improvement can make quite a big difference and I think that is all you are seeing really.

John, Toyota seem to have been up and down a bit even in these last eight days.
John Howett: I think all teams have been varying. I think our biggest problem in the last two or three races appear to have been pretty strong race pace if you look at fuel corrected pace but, actually, a problem with one lap pace. We started very strongly. We seem, relatively, to have dropped back but the biggest issue we feel in the last two or three races has been the one lap pace.

Christian, your consistency seems to be not bad.
CH: No, we have been reasonably consistent. Obviously, Valencia was a blip but I think on a day like today we treat it very much like a test day. It is impossible to predict what everyone else is doing with fuel loads, with revs, with engines, with set up, so we work through our own programme and we are reasonably happy with the day's work we have done today.

Adam, the form since Silverstone seems to have been really good. You seem to have taken a step up. What is the plan for the future?
AP: I think what's happened since Silverstone, well, probably since Monaco, is actually we have been finishing the job. I think we have had a reasonably competitive car all season up until today but it took us a few races to really start bringing home the points. But I think it has been consistent since then. We have had fourth and fifth position through pretty much every race, so the main thing is just getting the job finished and we have been doing that much better recently.

Is that going to be enough to hold onto Nico Rosberg?
AP: That's a very good question. I think you will probably have to ask him whether we are doing a good enough job to hold onto him or not but we are certainly doing the best we can in terms of giving him a good car, good strategy and trying to finish it for him.

What about Kazuki (Nakajima)? He seems to be having a lot of bad luck.
AP: Well, it is just absolutely awful to put a driver out there and then have a reliability issue or a pit stop issue and I think we all feel that we would like to see him doing the whole job himself and us doing our bit. It is difficult to blame a driver when you are not doing the full job yourself, so we need to look at our own performance particularly, for example, in Valencia.

What is the engine situation likely to be for next year?
AP: The engine situation is still a work in progress but I think we are relatively clear on which direction we want to go in but obviously it is not finalised yet.

Simon, can you tell us what your function is at Force India.
SR: I joined the team as part of the collaboration and the contract between Force India and McLaren Mercedes. It gave the team the opportunity to review its management structure which was done before I got there. I am there to run the team for Force India and that is what I do. Fundamentally because I know how all three organisations work I am pretty well placed to do that. That enabled us to take a very late decision and design and build a car around a new engine and a new gearbox and get out to do at least a couple of week's winter testing which the team did a fantastic job doing. Really since then my focus has just been more on the internal running of the team, improving things every weekend, and helping the guys down the tunnel and the design team to bring upgrades to the track just like any other team.

And the performance curve seems to be improving all the time.
SR: Yes, we are quite pleased. We are a small team and we have to be careful how we spend our money, so we had a strategy which we have been able to deploy. We took up significant upgrades to Silverstone and Valencia. Both those worked and we are still on the back of one of those here. We still have some stuff to come for later on in the season. That's how we are doing.

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