James, if we could start with you. Obviously you're using development engines this weekend, for the first time in quite a few years, the first time we've seen it in Formula One. What are you hoping the engine this weekend is going to bring and what did you think of your race pace in particular this afternoon in the dry?
James Allison: I hope, like all of the fellows at this table, that what we put on the car this weekend will make us competitive and strong in the qualifying and in the race. The engine is a part of that, the chassis is another part of that. It's just another thing to make the car go quicker. So I hope it will be strong and reliable all weekend and for the weekends that follow, Race pace? It's hard to know what to make of today. Normally these free practice session have a sort of pattern and a rhythm to them; we all do more or less the same programmes week after week and we get to have a feel for where we stand based on that. But on a day like today when the weather mucks things up and you can see the rain coming but you're not quite sure when it's going to come people tend to work on slightly different programmes and it makes it a little bit harder to judge. We think we went quite well today but I also think these chaps [Mercedes] are probably hiding their light under a bushel a little, so we'll see.
Sebastian Vettel said yesterday that Ferrari is definitely getting the best out of him. It's the first time that you have worked with Vettel, what do you think of what he said? And what are you doing to help Kimi Raikkonen to deliver the qualifying performances that your team principal has called for.
JA: I hope that driver, team, all of us work well together all the time and we try to get the best out of each other. I know that sounds trite but it's true nevertheless. Sebastian and Kimi are both very fast guys and therefore always good to work with from a team's point of view. It's nice that Sebastian's enjoying his opening stint with us and I hope that we keep it that way. With Kimi... very small things can distract a driver in qualifying and they need absolute focus in those very important laps and we just try to make sure that we remove any tiny operational defect on our side to give him a clear path to focus on getting a good lap and that's all we can do.
Coming to you Matt. We talked there with James there about development engines, Honda has brought a development power unit here using up some its available tokens, so what are the targets, then, for here?
Matt Morris: Like you say, we've used a couple of tokens, or Honda have used a couple of tokens this weekend to increase the efficiency of the power unit in general. It all seemed to work well today. The target is to keep improving, which is what we've been doing since the start of the season, so just more steady improvement.
You scored your first points in Monaco but clearly the objectives of McLaren's are higher than that. After a third of the season, can you say now what success would look like at the end of 2015?
MM: It's nice to score some points. We also realise we have still got a lot of progress to make and some circuits will be better to us than others. Monaco is one of the ones that has been good to us. In terms of what success would look like? Yeah, wouldn't it be great to get on the podium but I think that's a long way off. We've got a plan of both chassis upgrades and more power unit upgrades throughout the year so we'll just have to see.
Matthew, coming to you. Obviously both cars in the top 10 today, but quite a frustrating series of differing issues, meaning that you're not always getting both cars to the chequered flag on Sunday and picking up the points. Have you identified why this has been happening?
Matthew Carter: No we haven't. I think that there has been a lot of bad luck and yeah, I think we can put it down to bad luck. There have been a few driver issues, a few reliability issues and some bad luck. We're hoping to turn that round and to try to consistently get both cars in the points.
There's obviously been a lot of speculation in recent weeks about the possibility of the owners selling the Lotus team. Can you set the record straight? What is the position?
MC: I continue to say the same thing. The shareholders have told me that the company isn't for sale. I think I've said in the press before that everything is sale for a certain price. That's as much as I can say. I continue to reiterate that we signed a long-term contract with Mercedes Benz and as far as we're concerned we just continue down that route. That last information I heard was that we were going to be sold by the end of May but we're still here and we're still the same team.
Thank you very much for that. Graeme, coming to you, obviously announcements this week of some significant new hirings in the technical department and a new reserve and test driver. Can you tell us the strategy behind your team building at the moment and whether Leimer will get a race?
Graeme Lowdon: Your right, we're in a position where we're rebuilding the team really. The start of this season for us has obviously been very unusual and it's not the sort of start anybody would plan by design but it's what we've had to deal with. In terms of the technical structure of the team, we were lucky enough to have a number of people rejoin the team really very quickly, who had been with us in the past. I think we had a very efficient and effective technical team who were on a path to deliver a very neat car and package for 2015. Obviously that progress was interrupted and we're now in a phase that is quite unusual - having to rebuild things whilst also looking at the bigger picture and the bigger strategy. We don't want to get too focused on the day-to-day problems of getting back up to pace if you like. So obviously with Bob coming on board, a very, very experiences guy with a focus very much on the big picture, strategy going forward. Luca [Furbatto] is a guy with a huge amount of experience, so that's going to strengthen the design side of the business. And Gianluca [Pisanello] as well. Bob and Luca only started on Tuesday of this week, Gianluca has been with us for a few races but is already contributing to the trackside operation really well. So we're in a very rapid period of rebuilding. We've just got to get this period done as quickly as we possibly can. As far as Fabio is concerned, I don't know when he'll be in for his first FP1 - that'll be down to John, it's a driver call. But I'm very, very happy to have him on board. I think he's shown in junior formulae that he's got the right credentials to be here in Formula One and again, it's just part of building the team back up to the strength we want it to be.
Is it too for the new technical people to have any input on your 2015, quote-unquote, car? Are you thinking of delaying that so that they can?
GL: That's a very fair question and it's a balancing act the whole time. We've got to do what's right for the team and there are an awful lot of variables that have to be considered by the people whose responsibility it is going forward. There's no point having a dog and barking yourself. The people who are joining the team now will have an input into those decisions. It's an ever-changing feast at the moment.
Paddy, coming to you. Well, we have to start with your afternoon. Fastest for Lewis Hamilton, but then a big jump over the kerbs half way through the session and he ended it nose first in the barriers in what looked like an aquaplaning incident. Could you tell us a bit about the afternoon, why he went out and how much damage there is?
Paddy Lowe: Yeah, it didn't quite end the way we wanted it to. The simple reason is we went out to do some practice race starts. That's a normal part of our P2 programme. Because the programme was very condensed in the short window of dry weather that we had, we chose not to do those practice starts in the dry period but then to go out before it became very, very wet indeed and try and get two or three race starts done. Unfortunately the conditions worsened quicker than we had anticipated and the conditions caught Lewis out in an unfortunate manner. But we'll get it sorted for tomorrow, it should be all fine.
Going back to the last grand prix, have you had to change anything in terms of the protocols, the procedures from the pitwall and the decision-making processes in light of what happened at the end of the Monaco Grand Prix?
PL: Yeah. There was a mistake made and we always look at all errors and decide what to learn from them and how that carries across to other aspects of what we do. So, there were some problems with the software so we've fixed some bugs that were in that, changed some of our communications and freed up some of the people involved so they have a bit more capacity. So there are changes. While I have the opportunity, I want to point out, there's been a bit of a story that I thought this wasn't really a big deal. Of course it was a big deal. I think the point I was trying to make was that it was a single error, a small error which had, of course, a big consequence - but I really need to stand up for my team of guys who've made very few errors over the last couple of years, and just to put that in context. Formula One is a complex business, a lot of things to get right and most of the time we do that.
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