Belgian GP: FIA Friday Press Conference

TEAM REPRESENTATIVES
Allan McNISH (Audi), Graeme LOWDON (Cadillac), Alan PERMANE (Racing Bulls)

Q: Welcome to the FIA press conference, Allan, your first one in F1 since 2002. How are you enjoying, first of all, life as Racing Director of Audi?
Allan McNISH: I think all of us are racing people and we live and breathe it, and being at the track is where we actually come to life. From the point of view of where we are this year, obviously it’s a new season, a new chapter in Audi’s motor sport career, and to have seen it growing from really just the first conversations before it was even launched here in 2022, there’s been a tremendous amount of work and effort behind the scenes. But now, to be live at a circuit is really nice, especially on that fourth-year anniversary from when we launched the programme.

Q: Allan, can you just clarify your areas of responsibility and how they differ from CEO and Team Principal Mattia Binotto’s?
AM: Yeah, Mattia is in charge of the whole programme, from the power unit side, chassis side, everything back at base, whereas my area is here at the circuit. So, I’m in charge of the racing responsibility, if you want to put it that way, from engineering, from strategy, ultimately in these areas, but also in the activation, from marketing and communications, and pretty much everything in between. So, it’s quite a wide role, but also very much in line with the people already involved in the programme and back at base in Hinwil and Neuburg, and also in Bicester.

Q: Let’s talk about performance now. A decent result for Gabi last time out at Silverstone with that P8. Just how satisfied are you with the progress being made trackside?
AM: Certainly in all areas. I think we came out of the blocks and the car has been pretty quick overall. We’ve had a few reliability issues and the beginning of the season was quite tough, but really from Canada onwards we started to get a bit of control over that, so to be able to show the performance. In the last three races, really from Monaco onwards, we’ve been knocking on the door of points. It was pretty frustrating at times going home without them on a few occasions, especially if I think of Barcelona, where Nico was stunning and then a pretty freak incident took him out of the race. So, from that perspective, it is nice to get some points on the board and just to solidify, and also to prove to ourselves to a great extent, that we can actually deliver it. But to do that, we needed to improve in our process as well. We needed to improve in our race operations, which we’ve been doing slowly, I would say, step by step and race by race, to the point we are now. I think we’re quite comfortable with where we are.

Q: We’re at the halfway point in the season, so what are your goals for the second half?
AM: Well, I think, in the end, we know the competition, especially with Racing Bulls. We know Cadillac is improving quite a lot, as well as Alpine. So, for us, we are fighting in that midfield area and it’s to try to consistently be there, chipping at it. It depends, I think, a little bit circuit to circuit whether we’re ahead of one or behind, but ultimately, we need to be making sure that we’re delivering whatever the package can deliver each weekend. That’s the goal. Where it is relative, in terms of fighting in the top 10 or just outside it, that depends on the competition as well as us.

Q: A quick word on the drivers. You’ve said Nico was mighty in Barcelona, but just give us a summary of the job the two guys have done for you so far this year.
AM: I think we’re very fortunate, to be honest with you, with Nico and Gabi, because they complement each other very well. Different eras of their careers, I would say. With Nico especially, we’ve got someone who has a lot of experience, gets out there and still delivers it in a race situation, and we’ve seen that now on multiple occasions. Super good. On the other side of it, Gabi’s getting stronger every single weekend, and I think we’ve got a nice little balance between the two. As I stand here today, I think actually, for us and where we are, it is the perfect combination.

Q: Allan, thank you for that. I’m sure there’ll be more questions for you in a minute. Graeme, let’s come to you. Welcome. You got both cars to the finish at Silverstone after the reliability issues you’d suffered in the previous races. How significant was that for you and the team?
Graeme LOWDON: It was great. Everyone’s working extremely hard. Every team in this pit lane works incredibly hard, so it’s not something that’s unique to us. But the team worked really hard and it was frustrating to have a string of events where we were chasing particular problems around a bit, and we didn’t get a two-car finish in two or three races, and then obviously a double DNF in Austria, which you don’t want. So, Silverstone was nice to be back to what we’d experienced earlier in the season, finishing both cars in the Sprint race and both cars in the Grand Prix as well.

Q: We’re almost at the halfway point in the season. Can we get your verdict on progress so far, almost a half-term report for F1’s newest team?
GL: It’s difficult. There are no other new teams, so how do you actually measure something? The reality is Formula 1 is, I think, the most difficult team sport in the world. We have huge respect for the competition. I think that’s really important. We, as a team, have entered the sport with a bold ambition for the future, and if you’re going to do that, you enter the sport with humility and respect for the competition. This isn’t a sport you can just walk into and blow everyone away. It’s one where you have to build foundations and build a high-performance environment for your team to be in, and that’s exactly what we’re focused on doing. Everyone’s worked so hard. I’ll take this opportunity to say a massive thanks to everybody in the team, everyone in the US, in Indianapolis and in Charlotte, and also in Silverstone, and also at the wind tunnel in Cologne, in Germany. It really is a huge effort. Again, it’s difficult to measure the team’s progress in terms of championship position or performance because, as I say, we’re coming in completely from a standing start. But what we do look at measuring is, each weekend, what’s in our control, how well have we executed, what can we improve? Every day is a school day, and we’re just looking to learn as much as we can, as quickly as we can. We have to do it in front of a few hundred million people as well, so we want to do it as professionally as we can.

Q: A quick word on Valtteri, for whom it’s been trickier to get comfortable with this car than Checo. What have his struggles come down to, and how have his struggles helped you to develop the car?
GL: Honestly, I would not classify them as struggles. We’re asking the drivers to do different things all the time. They’re an integral part, both Valtteri and Checo, very much an integral part of the team. One of the reasons why we wanted them in the team is their experience in multiple team environments. They know how important it is to build the engineering team up, to build the mechanics, designers, everybody. So, I think it’s fair to say that they’re doing more than just driving the car, and it’s rare that we’re asking them to do exactly the same thing at exactly the same time. So, I wouldn’t want to suggest that Valtteri’s struggling in any way. I think he’s playing his part at the very pinnacle of motorsport, and he’s helping to drive the team forward.

Q: Graeme, thank you for that. Alan, thank you for waiting. We’ll come to you now. You’re the only team to have scored double points in the last four races. How have you managed to find such consistency when others seem to have struggled?
Alan PERMANE: I don’t know about the others, but we started this car a little bit late last year. We were in our own championship fight last year for that sixth place, and that was very important to us, so we started a little bit late on the 2026 car. We knew the first races, or we felt the first races, were going to be a bit of a struggle. Certainly, testing was definitely a struggle. We brought a very large upgrade for Melbourne, and we’ve continued to upgrade the car through the season. I think what really switched the car on was the floor we brought to Montreal, and that really did light the car up. The second part of what’s really helped our season is finding the race pace. We had a very nice car in Canada in qualifying, but it wasn’t so good in the race. Monaco was very similar, Barcelona very similar. I think Allan said that Nico was flying in Barcelona and we luckily managed to take him out of the race, but we didn’t have good enough race pace. What we’ve done since Austria, and Austria and Silverstone have shown, is that we’ve fixed that, certainly for those two tracks. Here, the early indications look like we’re in good shape as well. So it’s a combination of what has been delivered from the wind tunnel, design and production, and a little bit of the way the guys are running the car at the track.

Q: There’s a healthy rivalry developing between your two drivers. First up, how much are you relishing that?
AP: Yeah, it’s good to have two quick guys, that’s for sure. I’m sure there’ll be some management needed. They’re incredibly close. If we look this morning, their ideal laps are separated by milliseconds, so it’s going to be nip and tuck, I’m sure, all year.

Q: Lots of updates on the car here, but only one cooling update, which I believe is on Arvid’s car. How do you decide who gets an update like that?
AP: It’s not so easy, and honestly, we don’t like bringing updates for just one car. It was impossible for us to do it to two cars. It’s a chassis modification. We had to shrink the whole hoop, and we just couldn’t do that in time between Silverstone and here on both cars. What I did is I sat down with both drivers, I think it was in Austria on Saturday evening. We’d had a very good qualifying. I thought, “Okay, while everyone’s in a good mood, I’ll give some bad news. We’ve got a good update coming, but we can only do one car for Spa, and the next car will be done for the race after in Budapest.” So, I first suggested that the very simple option that makes it fair is we upgrade no cars for Spa, and then both of them for Budapest. Of course, they looked at me like I was crazy, and I wouldn’t have ever done that, so we didn’t really seriously consider that. The next thing I said is that we can flip a coin, or we can make it a little bit of fun and say whoever qualifies in front at Silverstone gets the upgrade. They both signed up for that, and that’s what we did. I think what we’ll do if it happens again later in the season, and it may happen later because we’ve got another big thing coming at some point, is it will go to Liam. We won’t do that again. He’ll automatically get it the next time. But we tried to put a little bit of fun into it rather than just allocating it to someone.

QUESTIONS FROM THE FLOOR

Q: (Craig Slater – Sky Sports) A question for Alan Permane. Obviously, Isack Hadjar is doing very well, having been promoted to the Red Bull senior team this year. It seems as though, if Max were to move on, maybe they’d go for a more experienced driver. But notwithstanding that, do you expect your driver line-up to roll on to next year, Alan? And can you see both of them one day as material for the Red Bull senior team, which would obviously be Liam’s second spell?
AP: Well, I think that’s the goal of both our guys, for sure, and the goal of mine and our team is to develop drivers for that team. I think going into specifics is far more a question for Laurent, but I think we need to put them both in a position where they’re ready to do that. If and when Laurent needs another driver, he’s got one or two to choose from.

Q: (Luke Smith – The Athletic) Just following on from that, you’ve also got Nikola Tsolov, who’s done really well in Formula 2. Just your thoughts on his performances so far, and if you’re in a situation where you do stick with Liam and Arvid for next year, would it be useful to have him as reserve?
AP: Yeah, he’s doing incredibly well. I think this morning in practice he was quickest. He’s now leading the championship, I think, after his great weekend at Silverstone. So, to say he’s on the radar would be a little bit of an understatement. He’s next in line, I think it’s fair to say. When that’ll be, I don’t know, honestly. It’s definitely not untrue to say we’re not thinking about it at the moment. He’s there, he’s doing his job, we’re doing our job, and we’ll make a call on whether, if and when, he comes up to Racing Bulls later this year, I’m sure.

Q: (Nicole Mulder – GPblog.com) A question to Alan Permane. Recently, you called Max the benchmark driver for young drivers. Of course, there’s been a lot of speculation about his future. Should he decide to move on, be it next year or in the future, what would be the biggest impact on the organisation, and also what would be the biggest challenge for you as a team?
AP: Well, on my team it’ll have no impact because he doesn’t drive for me, so I think that’s a question for Laurent, really. Max doesn’t drive for me, and it’ll be up to Laurent to decide his drivers for next season. If he really believes Liam or Arvid is ready to take that challenge, then of course we’ll be right there and ready to support that. But I don’t want to speculate on which one it could be, or if Max moves to another team, would he swap with a driver from another team? I think there are too many unknowns.

Q: (Nicole Mulder – GPblog.com) Also no impact on your drivers, because they learn a lot from Max, of course?
AP: Yeah, they do, but only what other drivers can learn from him. At the moment, we use GPS, we listen to his radio. One of the things I’m always saying to our guys is, “Listen to his communication. Listen to how calm he always is. Listen to how good his feedback is.” I think it’s a great example for young drivers, and that’s why I call him a benchmark, because of not only his pace, but how he carries himself in and out of the car is, from what I see, exemplary. That’s why I like to use him as a guide for the younger guys.

Q: (Leonid Kliuev – GrandePremio.com.br) A question for all three. Red Bull has lost several high-profile people recently. Just to put that into context for us, how significant would that be if a similar chain of events were to happen at your teams? Would it be enough to promote people from inside, or would you have to hire superstars from outside?
AM: From our point of view, we’re building a team. We’re at the very beginning of it. We’re not really focused on what happens with other teams. At the same time as well, just as a generic answer to you, it depends on what other people you’ve got within your infrastructure. No team is the same, no structure is the same, and you don’t necessarily have the same resources in the same department. So I don’t know if it’s a very easy question for us to answer, to be honest with you.
GL: Kind of in a similar position to Allan. We’re recruiting like crazy at the minute, and we have been for quite some time. We’ve openly said we want to make this a team that everybody would like to join, and people who are in it want to stay and are proud to be in it. So we’re very much on that side of the journey at the moment, as opposed to — nobody’s been at our team for very long. I guess I’ve been there the longest, but there’s not many who have been there for very long. So, it’s maybe another question for Alan [Permane].
AP: Of course, you don’t want to lose good people. No team does want to lose good people. One of the things that I think we’ve seen over the years is when a team has been very successful for many years, and then maybe they’re not so successful, you do tend to lose people. People feel they’ve completed that challenge there and they want to move on to other teams. I know a lot of the headlines are being made that ‘Another Verstappen ally leaves Red Bull’. I’m not quite so sure it’s quite like that. I don’t know personally. I’m not sure that everyone who has left has been hanging on to Max’s coattails. But simply, you don’t want to lose good people. You want to retain good people, and you want to have a working environment that makes people want to stay with you. I don’t think that’s different to any team up and down the pit lane.

Q: (Ben Vinel – Motorsport.com) A question to all three of you. As a percentage, how much of your team’s resources is currently dedicated to next year’s car, and can you explain why?
AP: No, I can’t answer that. Well, I can answer it, but I’m not going to answer that. We started looking at next year’s car, of course, but I’m not going to go into more detail on where we are on wind tunnel split and that sort of thing. But we’re on it.
AM: We are focusing, obviously, on not just necessarily next year, but the whole planning going forward. 2026 is where we’re now looking at race operations, or I am anyway. Mattia is obviously looking at the bigger picture with regard to the car and 2027, 2028, 2029, going on.
GL: I guess I’ve got a similar answer to Alan. Everybody’s looking at 2027. It comes around very quickly. That’s the one thing that I would say. We could dwell for quite some time on the 2026 car, because obviously we didn’t have a 2025 car that was operating at all, but I think everyone’s looking at 2027 now and seeing how fast that comes.

Q: (Adam Cooper – Adam Cooper F1) For all three of you, in the wake of Silverstone, should the sport be looking at ways of avoiding Safety Car finishes? Would you be open to the Race Director having more power to throw a red flag in the last three or four laps if it looks like it’s just going to fizzle out? I’m asking partly because, in the past, I think the teams have blocked that idea.
AP: I don’t know if that’s true, Adam. I think he has the power to do that if he wants. Honestly, I’d leave the management of the races to the Race Director and the FIA, and they generally do an incredibly good job of it. For me, Silverstone actually suited us, of course. We locked those positions in. I realise that’s not what we’re here for. We’re here to put a show on, and potentially that show could have been better. But I think they already have that power if they want to do that, so that’s up to them.
AM: I’d just maybe add, I don’t think anybody ideally wants a race to finish behind a Safety Car, whatever the reason. It’s something that is also going to be very specific, race-to-race circumstances, so you can’t put a blanket ruling into there because some of it could be a safety-related item, and there could be other factors in it as well. But in terms of that, I think the whole event at Silverstone was a great event. The race, I thought, was a really good race. It just happened to be that, unfortunately, it did see a yellow finish, which is not what we — and also, I have to say, I include the FIA — everybody in Formula 1 ideally wants. But sometimes it does happen.
GL: Nothing further to add from me. I would echo Allan’s comments on Silverstone. I thought it was a great event for the fans, and it was fantastic to see so many of them enjoying it there.

Q: (Rodrigo França – Car Magazine Brazil) A question to Allan McNish, please. How much can your racing experience from a long career in Formula 1 and Le Mans help a young talent like Gabriel Bortoleto to develop in Formula 1 and get podiums, wins and even championships with Audi?
AM: Well, I think everybody leans on their experiences. I’ve got experience inside the cockpit and also outside the cockpit. Without doubt, I can tell you, when I’m watching FP1 or FP2 this afternoon, I’m watching the onboards and living it from the cockpit in a way, and that definitely does have some advantages. But I think it’s also got advantages if you don’t have that experience, because you look at it from a different perspective. I can’t teach Gabi how to drive, because he knows that already. I think that’s pretty clear and safe. But there are definitely experiences that I’ve had that will come up in his career at some point, and I think having someone who has been through it is an advantage in these situations. But, as I said previously, with Nico and with Gabi, we’ve also got one driver helping the other and complementing the other as well. So, I don’t think Gabi just necessarily takes things from me. I think he also takes things from everybody in the team, but also Nico as well.

Q: Allan, what do you think is Gabi’s greatest quality?
AM: I would say when we had a problem in Silverstone in qualifying, in the first point, and he only got one run to get out at the end of Q1, that was a really good point. Even though everything was going on around him, his mind was still very much focused on getting that lap together and executing a clean lap. He’s able to do that quite consistently, execute the clean laps. But I suppose, if I take it outside, it’s just his joyous enthusiasm. He’s just a light-hearted, great character to have in the team, smiling, and that’s a really big positive for us. He just lifts us in some of the difficult races we’ve had, difficult days. We’ve got Nico, who on the experienced side takes the team forward. Gabi, on the youthful enthusiasm side, takes the team forward as well.

Q: (Alex Kalinauckas – The Athletic) A question to Graeme, please. Your car has looked rather different in the last couple of races in terms of its livery. Obviously, the red, white and blue celebration for the Fourth of July weekend, but particularly the change in terms of the split livery you had, which is no longer on the car. Could you explain that decision, and also what’s going on with the evolution of that colour scheme?
GL: We’ve had quite a few liveries already. We started, as you say, with an asymmetric livery. We launched that during the Super Bowl halftime show, which, again, we thought was just another way of showing that the team wants to approach Formula 1 a little bit differently. We said we would try and bring a few different things to Formula 1. I think that was a really positive move, and we ran that livery for a while. We then ran a livery in Miami, which was really well received by the fans, and we took account of that. The livery we have now is actually quite similar to that Miami livery. Then, in the middle of that, we introduced the livery to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. As a team, if you look at not just livery changes, but if you look at upgrades, I think we’re pretty high up there on the count of upgrades that we’ve brought to the car. Again, I think it’s just a reflection of the way we’ve tried to approach the entry into Formula 1. It’s never been about just getting here. It’s always been about trying to get here as a team and do what all the other teams do, which is push the boundaries. We’re not just sitting back, whether that’s upgrading the car or experimenting with the livery as well. As I’ve said, the fan reaction has been really positive as well.

Q: (Filip Cleeren – Motorsport.com) Also for Graeme, please. To your point on setting goals and measuring expectations, Checo said yesterday that he was expecting the team to be a little bit further along than it is right now. Obviously, you hired two veteran Grand Prix drivers and Grand Prix-winning drivers. Were you expecting that novelty of being a new team to wear off, then how do you leverage their impatience to drive the team forward?
GL: Well, you know, being in the game long enough, that’s exactly the comment you would get from an experienced driver. The drivers are always going to want to push the team. You ask anybody if they’re happy with the performance within a team, and the reality is, in Formula 1, nobody’s ever happy until you leave, because you’re constantly looking to improve. Checo’s no different. I mentioned before about both him and Valtteri playing their part in pushing the team forward, and that’s really important. One thing I would say is the way they’ve gone about it, I really like, because some drivers could push too hard, and if you push too hard in this game at the wrong time, the results won’t come. It’ll actually be negative. So, I think, throughout the team, we have a really good level of tension in a positive way, and you need that. As I said before, we’re not just here to be an 11th team. We’re here because we’ve got some ambition. So I think that’s really the root of his comments, unless he had a crystal ball and knew exactly where everything was going to be.

Q: (Vincent Sondermeijer – NRC Media) A question for Graeme. Lots of the questions you’ve been getting are obviously about Cadillac being a new team, but when do you stop being a new team? It sounds silly, because the obvious answer would be the first race of 2027, but what I’m getting at is: when do you reach a point where you are no longer finding your feet and you can say, “we now have the operational experience to be as efficient as the other teams”?
GL: I think it comes in different parts. Actually, as a team, we just come here, even after Melbourne, we can’t just say, “hey, we’re a new team and therefore we’re going to operate differently,” or anything else like that. From an operational point of view, we have to have the mindset that we are an experienced team. That’s clear to me. We counted up, at one time, the number of years of experience at the management level of the team, and it was literally thousands of years of Formula 1 experience, but only a few months working together. So, we need to lean into that experience to operate as all the other teams operate, because there’s only one championship for constructors and we’re in the same championship as everyone else. In terms of whether there are differences for a new team, yes, there are. We can’t run a TPC programme for a couple of years because we don’t have a previous car. So, there are very real things that are different, and we do have to do certain things a different way. But not in terms of the mindset. In terms of the mindset, we need to operate just like every other team already.