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Were you basically happy with the way things worked out?
“If you see the engine on its own, I would say we
are happy in terms of performance. But if I look at the reliability we suffered as a team, as a package, then of course we’re not
happy.”
What was the major issue in the change from V10 to V8?
“We found that for some reason a lot of minor details that had
lost importance during the V10 era became important again in terms of stopping the car. Small things like a shaft driving a pump, or
the radiator fixings. No-one had to worry about details like these in the last two or three years of the V10, but they experienced a
different loading condition on a V8. This was basically the fee to pay in the first year of the V8s and hopefully this year we won’t
experience anything like it.”
How much did the forthcoming engine freeze influence your thinking last year?
“First of all, the uncertainties
influenced us a lot. For a long time it was not clear what was planned, which for us meant keeping a lot of parallel projects alive
to try to cover everything. That was the first issue. Secondly, there was the idea of introducing a rev limiter but, even if this
was discussed before, no-one thought it would go to 19,000rpm. We planned to introduce an engine during last season that was
designed to rev much higher. It was an engine to finish the season with, and then properly introduce for 2007. Once it was clear
that we had to homologate an engine in 2006 for 2007, we had to stop, so it was a big waste of resources and time.”
When did you really start to focus on the homologation engine?
“After Nurburgring we started to think about our
development based on 2007, and definitely in the last four or five races – from Monza on – all our evolutions were strictly
constrained by thinking about 2007. I think it was the same for other teams as well.”
You handed the FIA the ‘reference’ engine in Brazil last year. Are you happy with it as a base for the next few years?
“We think it’s a good base, but as a racing team we were not happy about development restrictions because we were thinking of a lot
of development we wanted to carry out. The FIA has limited the possibility of re-tuning, which means that a lot of planned
development that should have gone on the engine had to be stopped. As an engineer, this is something that I don’t like!”
What can you gain from the new partnership with Williams?
“From the engine point of view we are doubling the chance to
tune reliability and so on. They should be a good benchmark, so I can collect double the data, and from an engine point of view
that’s important for us. I think also our chassis colleagues can learn a little bit, and will be better able to judge the positive
aspects of our car. Both Williams and Toyota will have a benchmark.”
What’s your overall feeling about the 2007 package?
“We have worked a lot, and the team has improved. We are confident
that our performance was much better than what we showed last year as an average. If you have a slow package, you are always slow.
We had some spikes on several occasions that showed when everything was working the right way at the right moment, we could
definitely be competitive. After Renault and Ferrari I think you could put us in the pool of cars battling for third. This means
that we are confident this year’s car will be very fast. There are a lot of potentially very good candidates so it will be quite
challenging. We have done a good job, but as usual we’ll understand in March how well the others have done too.” | 
