Bahrain: Geoff Willis explains F1

Geoff Willis
By Phil Huff (01/04/2004)
April 1 2004

The traditional Friday press conference moved a day, and took place on today instead. Geoff Willis, Lucky Strike BAR Honda's tech chief, was there to answer questions.

Q: Have you seen any surprises since you've been here?

Geoff Willis: I haven't yet been around the track, I will probably do so this afternoon, but from what the race engineers have been saying some of the slow corners look tighter than we originally thought. Like Mike, we have done a lot of simulations and we are reasonably set up and we will just have to get laps in early tomorrow to make sure we understand where we are.

Q: I understand teams make the gear ratios for specific races so if you were out how difficult would that be to correct?

It's important that your simulation is accurate enough to give you the right choice of ratios and we have a large range of ratios we can choose. But we don't want to lug tonnes of ratios around the world, particularly for these long-distance races, so we are normally pretty confident about the ratio we are going to use. Generally we don't get caught out.

Q: Can you just give a run-down on how you think it has gone for your teams so far in the first two races?

It is certainly an encouraging start to the season. This is the third year of a graded plan and we were nicely on time with getting the first podium, not the first podium ever but the first podium where we have raced through for it. That was very important for the team and also very important for Jenson. We have made big improvements to the car, we thought it was going to be a lot better and it is certainly proving itself. We have still got a long way to go. We haven't reached the level at which we will stop. But I think a good start, a little bit unfortunate to lose the engine in Takuma's car at the last race. We have got a reasonably good idea what the problem was, we have been testing with the solution and we had a reasonably good test at Ricard last week as well. It's logical, we are progressing steadily, and it is our target to get faster relative to the rest of the grid throughout the year.

Q: Talking of Jenson, how much have you seen him change since the end of last season?

Jenson has a lot of experience – this is his fifth year of Formula One – so I think sometimes his appearance of a calm and very laid-back attitude belies the fact that underneath it he is very, very focussed on what he is doing. With his position now he is certainly able to influence the team, to give that leadership from the cockpit that is important. I certainly think he has stepped up to the next level, it might be that the podium position has confirmed to him that podiums are achievable, not just for him but also the car is able to get there and I think probably you will see another big step from him and the team as a result.

Q: Just going back on the progress of the team, a number of people often say when we get to Melbourne that you have to wait until Imola because that is when all the little new bits and pieces come onto the car. Is that the case with you two?

We have a number of changes for both the car and the engine at Imola. Certainly Imola, being the first European race, gives us some time to regroup a little bit. It's very difficult to develop the car at arms length during the fly-away races and you try to make sure that your car, as it goes to Melbourne, is competitive because it gives you that little bit of breathing space, it gives you the opportunity to judge your performance in true race conditions compared to the opposition and that will give you some degree of focus. We already knew to some degree what we were going to do for the Imola race but it has confirmed that we are focussing on the right things. We have some engine steps and we have some chassis steps.

Q: I am sure you have both simulated how the cars are going to go around here and what sort of lap times they are going to do. Can you tell us?

It's going to be the low 30s I think. I could be proven wrong very quickly tomorrow on that.

Q: So a one-minute 30 point something?

It will probably depend on the rate the circuit cleans up. There is a certain amount of error in these simulations when you get to the circuit that you have not been to before. The lap time we would predict going to Imola would probably be a bit more accurate.

Q: Just for information, how many simulations have you done before coming here?

I think you are asking how many simulations we do to set the car up and how many we do to predict the strategy for the race itself. Without giving away too much, we do quite a lot of simulations to make sure, but the initial simulations we do to get the target weight distribution, target gear ratios, that can be done quite quickly.

Q: Everyone has their views on qualifying. In your view, what sort of Friday and Saturday should there be?

It is an intriguing question and I suspect the answer from the teams will differ from that of the fans. It would be good to have some way of ensuring that people were competing in terms of absolute car speed. I think we would all like to know, absolutely, how fast we are, as it used to be when we had four qualifying runs and people were running in low fuel configuration. I think the reverse qualifying is quite interesting and the single lap certainly brings out some stronger demands on the drivers and penalises errors very heavily. So if we could come up with some scheme where there was real encouragement for having one session on low fuel and then carry on with the second session as we have at the moment then that might satisfy both requirements.

Q: Going back to the gear ratios – does it happen that you have too short gears? If so, what are you going to do?

It has happened in the past and I am sure you can think of a few examples where cars have looked as though they were going to try to overtake and simply pulled up next to them and tucked back in because they were held off by the soft limiter. We certainly try to do our best to ensure we don't, but there are races where it is very difficult to get top gear right and there is some very frantic last-minute discussion in that time between second session on Saturday morning and the qualifying.