Belgium: Geoff Willis talks about F1

By Phil Huff (27/08/2004)
August 27 2004

Lucky Strike BAR Honda's technical chief Geoff Willis took part in the Friday Five press conference today, and chatted about regulations, circuits, Bernoldi and even Jacques Villeneuve. Here's what he had to say...

Geoff, first of all, Enrique Bernoldi seems to be a rather strange choice to some people as a test driver. Can you tell us the thinking behind it?

We had a specific requirement for a second test driver towards the end of the season, particularly between the fly-away races: Shanghai, Suzuka. The split is not when we want to bring the race drivers back to Europe. We have a very busy test programme 'til the end of the season and we were looking for an experienced driver to work through some very specific programmes for us and Enrique fits the bill of what we need. He's actually been running today in a small shakedown test and will be running next week and at the Jerez test later on in the year. Now secondly the driver selection process: how much does that affect you? How much do you have an interest in that, influence in that?

That's a three-part question, quite complicated. Certainly the driver selection is important, and yes I do have an involvement and yes I do have influence in it, although right at the moment it's not the primary task. We have a big set of rule changes for next year and fundamentally my task is to make sure we design and operate a quick car and do so as efficiently as possible so I wouldn't say it's a secondary issue but it's not my primary task.

Just coming to this circuit, what sort of loads are there through Eau Rouge?

It is still a fairly intimidating corner. For the driver, there's not much room if anything goes wrong. It's much more consistently taken flat now. The grip levels are just going up and up and the load levels on the cars are going up as the tyres get better and as the aerodynamics on the cars get better. Certainly it's still a pretty challenging circuit and we see, in some places on this circuit, some very high loads, some of the highest loads during the year.

With the rule changes for next year, would Eau Rouge become more of a challenging corner again?

I think it is always a challenge. It's probably psychological as much as physically. Certainly the regulation changes for next year will slow the cars down. We don't know yet quite how much. We know what the target is and clearly we will all be working very hard to try and recover some of that loss in performance. Spa is towards the end of next year, if it's next year. I think the cars will be a little bit slower but not substantially.

Will they have less grip I suppose is the question?

Certainly they will have less grip. There is a big margin of grip at the moment, so I'm not sure at the moment whether they will drop outside that.

There was a meeting in Hungary of the Technical Working Group to almost finalise the rules for next year. We've got a deadline of September 6 to put a package together. Are you confident that what you have got now is what will be forwarded to the FIA or will there be more changes and more tweaks? Are you now designing your cars to the regulations that you have in your mind?

As I understand the situation, one of the purposes of the Technical Working Group meeting on the 6th was to see whether there was another proposal that would get 80 percent minimum agreement from the teams to go to the FIA for consideration for next year, and no there wasn't in the sense that the majority of teams want to keep with the set of rules that have been proposed. There are however a couple of areas where there was some discussion about possible changes. I think the general consensus is that we need a set of rules to be fixed now, in fact we needed them fixed four months ago. So even though they are not all that comfortable for us, we would much prefer just to know what rules we are designing next year's cars to and stick to them. There is a possibility of a clarification, two further small changes, but fundamentally the regulations that were issued on the 16th of July, with a few corrections, will be the regulations we build the cars to next year.

As you may know, last month F1 Racing ran a news story in the news section basically a new qualifying proposal from Tony Purnell involving sprint races and a draw and all that sort of stuff. Could I just ask what you think of that proposal?

There are several points here. We should consider is that big changes to qualifying don't change the sporting regulation, but it does have quite a big technical knock-on into the design of the car and the fuel capacity of the car. But we shouldn't get around the fact that qualifying is part of the whole race weekend and apart from the two-leg qualifying being a little too long for a TV slot, the big issue is the nature of racing and overtaking. We've seen quite clearly with Hockenheim followed by Hungary that the qualifying doesn't control the racing, the circuit does. The technical regulations don't control the racing, the circuit does. Simply we just need the right sort of circuit design so we know how to demonstrate the same cars, the tyres, drivers at two different races. If we focus back on qualifying as a spectacle, certainly I'm keen, and I'm sure all the other engineers in the pit-lane are, to have a showcase comparing how fast the cars are. I think we now understand the race fuel in car qualifying format and I'm sure we can come up with a way of having one of those based on the reverse of the previous race results. Two rounds of it is probably not sufficiently interesting enough to keep people's focus for the whole of a two-hour period, but one round of it is what most of the teams would like to continue with. Clearly we will race in whatever set of challenges we are given.

Jacques Villeneuve has been quoted as saying he wants to come back to BAR next year, that he can patch up the differences with the team and slot right back in. How do you feel about that?

Well you are completely correct that Jacques spoke to me, phoned me several times, has spoken to David Richards and other people at BAT. He is certainly very keen and enthusiastic for getting back into a car. But really that is probably the end of any comments I will make. Clearly our driver line-up for next year is not something that should be discussed and debated in public. It is something for the team to work out and we will see what comes next year.

After Hockenheim the front suspension you were running on the cars was banned and the appeal was lost. Are you planning to run that in any other kind of shape or form or will it come back next year?

If you will excuse me for being fairly short on that one but I think it is a simple no comment on it at the moment is all I can offer.