26/06/2006
NEWS STORY
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Kimi Raikkonen's mistake on the penultimate lap gifted Michael Schumacher second place, and two points more than the German had been expecting. Nonetheless, it had been a strange weekend for the Italian team, how did Jean Todt feel about the race?
"It's a little bit like Silverstone," he relies, "when you are pretending to win and you finish second and fifth.
"So, a bit disappointed but saying that, we chose a strategy which was to do qualifying with a lot of fuel and it's always easy afterwards to say it was good, not good, but it was not good enough to allow us to win the race. Saying that, second and fifth is not as good as first and second, but important points in the championship, but it is making it more difficult, because every time you lose three points to the opposition, who mainly race with one car, one driver, who makes no mistakes, and for whom everything goes well… it makes things difficult, but that's the challenge."
Asked about Raikkonen's 'gift' to Michael, Todt said: "I would have preferred to received one present in front, one more, so we had half a present. We got one Finnish/German present but we didn't get a Spanish/France present.
"Maybe next time…" he smiles.
Asked about the lack of grip throughout the weekend, the Frenchman shrug one of his typical Gallic shrugs. "If you take carefully the lap times of Trulli during qualifying, he's about one second slower than Michael. Weight is performance, and during the race, if you see that once Michael managed to pass Trulli, when you look at the final result Trulli is a lap behind. We were probably missing some grip in qualifying, but our performance was not so bad."
"The expression damage limitation has been used a lot," says a journalist, "when did you realise it was going to be damage limitation, before you got here or during the weekend?
"At the end of the race," the Frenchman responds. "If the race is not over, anything can happen, and finally to finish second and fifth as against first and fourth, it's three points difference, it's limited, but I would prefer the other way around."
An obvious question, but it has to be asked; "what makes Renault so strong?" Todt's response is equally obvious: "They have a good package, good driver, good team, no mistakes."
So, what the difference between the two teams… "Probably it's a little bit everywhere," he admits, "they have a better first lap in qualifying, about two tenths. If you take the weight of the cars, knowing when they stopped, when we stopped it's about two tenths, so maybe they have a better first lap and as for consistency, it's very difficult from one race to another one, the development of the track, the development of the tyres, the weather conditions."
Does Ferrari have any particular chassis or engine developments coming which may give you it an advantage over Renault, is there any step that Todt has seen that might encourage him?
"We know roughly what is coming for us," he admits, "but we don't know what is coming for the others. So it's during the course of the race weekend that we have an understanding. When you do seven hundred kilometres a day in private testing it's because you have something to test which is due to improve the performance of the car. That we don't know."
Asked if his team has stepped up the rate of development in response to Renault, accelerated the rhythm of development, Todt replies: "No, we do what we can do."
McLaren have made some quite significant improvements over the last two or three races; is Ferrari worried that they could start taking points away from Michael in the championship?
"It all depends on where they will finish," is the reply. "If they finish between Renault and us, it's no good. If we are in front and they finish in front of Renault it will be good for us," he adds, with a smile.
Asked if Ferrari has the development in planning to improve and beat the McLarens and Renaults, Todt says: "I would say that at the moment McLaren is behind us. It doesn't mean that they are not strong, they are strong and from one race to another, it's such a little difference in lap time that you cannot predict in which order it will be. So far the most consistent is Alonso with Renault and Michelin, it's the only thing we can really state at the moment."
Last year, McLaren was in a similar situation to Ferrari in that they were behind Renault, and Renault kept trotting out win after win, they chose to go for a very aggressive development to try and claw back the lost pace to the cost of reliability. Will Ferrari be taking a balance of one over the other to try and claw back the gap to Renault?
"What do you mean by reliability," asks Todt, "mainly on engine?"
"Would Ferrari risk trying for a win," asks a journalist, "because finishing second obviously isn't enough any more, Ferrari has to start winning some races."
"We must be more competitive yet still reliable," Todt responds, "but otherwise it doesn't mean anything. Not a bigger risk, just trying to do a better job."
Looking ahead to next weekend's race, Michelin has never won at Indianapolis. Does Todt think next weekend's race will provide us with an indication of where this championship fight's heading, whether Ferrari can respond to Renault?
"The biggest problem at the moment is that they can allow themselves not to do a very good race, which has not happened so far," he replies, "and on our side we cannot allow that ourselves, because it would make a much bigger gap, so on this side they are in a much stronger position than what we are. It is not only one race. And there's no reason why they should not be competitive, as there is no reason why we should not be competitive. How competitive? There will not be a big difference."
"Indianapolis could be the key of the championship?" says a journalist. "Why?" asks Todt, clearly puzzled.
"If Alonso wins again…" says the journo. "And if we finish second?" the Frenchman replies.
"It's now half-time in the championship," adds the persistent reporter. "In the last four races, the gap between Alonso and Michael has risen every time… just a little bit. How does this affect the general feeling with in the team?"
"General feeling?" says Todt. "We are still fighting, still fighting and hoping that we can still win races and pretend to improve our position in the championship."
"But realistically it's getting more and more difficult every time," says the journo. "Let's hope it gets more and more easy," says Todt. "If we can reverse the trend, we will try. I still believe there is a chance."
There has been a lot of talk about the BMW rear wing. Is it something Ferrari has been paying attention to? "No," admits the Frenchman. "They talked about our car because we had a bigger top speed, because we had flexible wings.
"So it was a new rule," he adds, referring to the separators, "and we still have good top speed."
Asked how Ferrari will approach Indianapolis, with America being a major market for the car manufacturer, Todt says: "We will approach Indy like a normal race, normal race which was not a normal race last year but for us it was a normal race."
"Last year it was even more difficult, but where is the difference between last year and this year?" asks a journalist. "The gap is now getting more and more…"
"You say last year it was more and more so it was more," Todt replies, "so it's less than last year."
"Last year, at some point you had to say, 'OK, it's not going to happen this year', so how far are you from that point?" persists the journo.
"For me, I like numbers," Todt smiles, "so we still have nine races to go and numbers are still allowing us to think that we can achieve what we want to achieve."
From out of the blue, a change of subject: Why is Ferrari in favour of a complete engine freeze?
"We have short memories, gentlemen," says Todt. "Now we have FIA rules from '08 onwards, then it was the Maranello meeting, then I understand it was Monte Carlo meeting and the Maranello meeting is a proposal which allowed some limited work on the engine every year, which we feel is a reasonable proposal.
"Some of the other competitors are not in favour of that, they are in favour of the Monte Carlo proposal, and we are not in favour of it. Which is not the first time. As we don't agree, what happens? We go back to FIA rules which is freezing the engine."
Asked if Ferrari would still be in favour of the Maranello agreement, the Frenchman responds: "We agreed on that, and normally if we do agree on something we will not come back on our word," he replies, conveniently forgetting his team's shock decision to quit the GPMA's forerunner, the GPWC, of which Ferrari was a founder. "But you must bear in mind that among the reasons we say that Formula One is too expensive. It has no meaning for the top teams to have close to a 1000 people, to spend what the top teams spend, and we must really think about the interests of the sport and see how we can reduce the costs, so that's what we try to achieve, but it seems that some competitors like to spend money.
"Honestly, I feel that for Ferrari it would be good to take Formula One as a revenue for the company, which could be quite easy considering the amount of commercial revenues we have."