Peter Sauber Discusses Team's Progress
By FIA
May 30 2004
Following an emotionally charged race in Monte Carlo last weekend, where Fisichella crashed but Massa boosted the team to 5th place, Peter Sauber discusses recent events and improvements within the team.
Peter, apart from a blip in Monaco, things seems to have been going better recently with the team. Can you tell us why that should be?
Peter SAUBER: I think the team has been making progress since Imola. Monaco was a very special race. Maybe Giancarlo could have had a very good race, but we needed a lot of luck with Felipe.
Can you tell us why they’ve made progress? Is it because you understand the car better or perhaps is it your new wind tunnel?
PS: I think it is a combination of many things together. We have two new drivers, two new race engineers and of course they work better together. Then it’s the new wind tunnel, slowly we understand the new wind tunnel better.
Is that now producing parts?
PS: Sure, yeah. We used the first parts at Imola.
What about Felipe? Today we saw him have several incidents. He still seems to be a little bit prone to incidents.
PS: No, he’s much better than he was two years before. I think the year with Ferrari was a very good for him, especially on the technical side. Don’t forget, he’s two years older.
Now, one thing you’re able to do but have not done so far is run a third driver on Fridays. Is that likely to happen?
PS: Yes, it makes no sense for us to drive with a third driver. The team can work more quietly with only two cars. It makes no sense for us to do it.
Questions from the floor:
(Alan Baldwin – Reuters) Ross, at the start of the season Giancarlo Fisichella was looking at having a test with Ferrari at some point. It now seems there is a problem and I understand that it is maybe something to do with his overalls. Can it really be that a pair of overalls can stop him having a test with you?
RB: I am not aware of that. Peter might be able to shed some light on that. I am not actually aware of the background to that although I did hear the story. Technically there just has not been an opportunity for him to run so from the point of view of the programme we have so there has not been a convenient time for him to run, but I am not aware of any commercial issues.
Peter, any comment?
PS: Yeah, it is a small problem, but it is an internal problem.
(Dan Knutson – National Speed Sports News) For all four of you, there has been a lot of talk about improving the show, the spectacle. If you could change one thing for the fans, both at the track and on television, what would you do?
PS: It is a good question and an important question but it is not easy to give you an answer, there are a lot of ideas. One thing is the qualifying. I think now the qualifying is not as good as the old – with fuel, without fuel – and the same is for the race. And maybe the idea with the harder tyres is a good one, maybe also the idea with wider tyres, harder and wider tyres would mean the braking area would be longer and maybe it would be easier to overtake. It is very difficult to improve the show.
(Mike Doodson) Peter, you have had two engine failures this year, can you explain what has happened? Did you have one engine failure or two today?
PS: Today was one engine failure but at the moment we don’t know what the problem was. The other one was a failure in the electric system and the first one in Australia was not a real engine failure because Massa spun and he over revved the engine close to 20000rpm and that was too much for the engine.