Arai-san, if I can start with you please. What's the current state of the Honda project? Is Honda on target with development?
Yasuhisa Arai: First of all, thank you very much to sit in centre. I am glad to be here again after Shanghai. Our progress is right now almost on schedule and I hope that in the year 2015, March we will make [a good start] together with our partner, get a good start on the grid.
Would you like to run the power unit in a McLaren before the end of the year? Is that feasible? Are you allowed to do that?
YA: Everyone asks this to me! McLaren and Honda work together to design and create an experimental test vehicle to check the power unit system but unfortunately we don't have an actual test plan but I hope if possible we will drive just before next season.
You can't say any more than "just before next season"?
YA: Just before next season. End of the season and next season, during that time. That's my hope.
What lessons have you learned from the efforts from the other power unit manufacturers? Are there particular areas that you've noticed they've had troubled with?
YA: I've learned very small things because most of the data we don't know. So, very difficult to learn on the track.
You've seen the failures that they have had. Are there particular areas you have concentrated on?
Jonathan Neale: If I may, just to help my partner here, as Arai-san says it's very difficult at arm's length to focus on any particular area. Honda and McLaren have a lot of work to do together in a short period of time and I'm sure if you were to ask - I don't want to put words in the mouth of either Andy or Remi here - but if you were to ask them what it felt like for them at this time of year before they were starting with the V6 engines, they'll know what we're going through at the moment.
Thank you for that. If I can come to the back row now: a couple of questions for all of you. First of all, what is your state of development at this stage for 2015 with your engines? Remi, if I can start with you?
Remi Taffin: It's all about on plan. It's basically now a few months we are working on that and we now have got a few examples on the dyno, so it's a work in process. I think we are going in the right direction. It's always difficult to know if we'll hit all our targets but that's where we are at the minute.
Andy?
Andy Cowell: We've been doing lots of development ever since we froze the specification of this year's engine in February, so we've been doing lots of development on research engines and using this year's engine as a prove-out but our final specification of engine won't be complete until the early part of next year, because for all of us we're in the development phase until the.
Thank you. And Pat?
Pat Fry: Our development is very similar to Andy's really. As soon as the engine was frozen we've obviously been developing as hard as we can and trying to improve the power unit in all areas. There is a huge amount for us still to do. Very little of next year's spec engine actually exists, which I expect to be the same for everyone here. It will all finally be coming together at the start of January.
Can I ask you your feelings about unfreezing in-season power unit development and where is that discussion actually going? Remi?
RT: Where is that discussion? I think at the moment it is at the upper level than the one we are here and what I think about it, or what Renault thinks, is that it is not going to really change the way we are working. As Andy says we are developing our engine for next. There won't be many parts that will be looking like the one from this year. Whether we will be able to put all the parts, all the development into one engine for Melbourne is difficult to say. Of course we will push as much as we can, because the more we put for the first race, the more performance we will get for the whole season. If we've got a slot at some point in the season to introduce some more development, they will be on the shelf, because obviously we just keep on working all through the year. It's not really decisive in how we achieve our development. We will just take the opportunity if it is there.
What are your feelings about this Andy?
AC: I think it would be a change to the way we are structured. We froze the performance specification of this engine in January/February of this year and started working on a 12-month development programme and if you've got one introduction point or two introduction points, it is a change. And often it is the prove-out - taking that performance specification into something that is reliable enough to do five race weekends - that's the costly aspect, because you've got to have several sets of bits and often you have to go back around, because fatigue failures occur and you've got to redesign and go again. The regulations were put together several years ago with the opportunity to do an annual performance update. If we change to a mid-season as well as a start-of-season update, we all just need to consider that carefully. I think we all acknowledge that it would affect the financial situation. Perhaps the engineering directors would love the opportunity but the finance directors would have a furrowed brow at the thought of doing it. It needs to be discussed and considered carefully.
Pat, what does Ferrari think of this?
PF: I think we are continually developing all through the year. It's not like we're targeting a fixed point, we're developing as quickly as we can in every single area - some parts of that will be ready in January and some might not. But even then we don't stop, we'll carry on developing all through the following year. I think the changes that are being discussed still stay within the technical regulations and the number of tokens that you are allowed - it's exactly the same number - it just gives you the opportunity to upgrade in one extra point, mid-season. I think for us the cost implications are not huge. As I said we would be doing all that development work anyway and also trying to improve the reliability of bits, so it doesn't make a huge difference for us from that point of view.
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