TEAM REPRESENTATIVES
Laurent MEKIES (Red Bull Racing), Frédéric VASSEUR (Ferrari), Ayao KOMATSU (Haas)
Q: Fred, please, if we could start with you. It feels like it’s been a bit of a roller coaster of a week for Ferrari. On the evidence of FP1, just what is the mood in the camp at this stage?
Fred VASSEUR: Well, the mood is positive, honestly. Even if we had a tough weekend last week in Zandvoort – at least a tough Friday – but the recovery was good. Even if the race was a double DNF at the end, we left with not a positive number of points, but at least a positive mood and positive approach, with the feeling that we recovered during the weekend. The other advantage is that you don’t have to wait too much for Monza. It meant that from Monday morning, we were already in Monza. The mood in general is very good, and we had a positive push from the Tifosi all week, from Monday morning in front of the factory. This is an extra energy and a good one.
Q: Tell us about FP1. It couldn’t have started better. Just how confident are you of staying at the sharp end for the rest of the weekend?
FV: With the experience of the season and of the couple of seasons I did, you don’t have to draw any conclusions after FP1 – hopefully, because last weekend, we were last. It means there’s still a long way until the end of quali and even more until the end of the race. We have to stay focused on ourselves, to try to continue to improve the car and the driving, and to try to get the best from what we have. But I will never draw any conclusions after FP1.
Q: Fred, you said in an interview this week that you want the team to win races in the second half of this season. Where do your best opportunities lie? What kind of racetrack?
FV: I think nobody expected that we could do the pole position – me, the first – in Budapest. We know that the fight is very tight, that we have four teams and perhaps sometimes more able to fight for pole position. For sure, McLaren is one step ahead, but it’s very difficult for everybody to be consistent. We can have days where they are a step back, and on those days we have to be there. I don’t want to say this one or that one – we have to perform everywhere and get the best from what we have.
Q: Fred, final one from me. I don’t know if you’re a student of history, but the team is celebrating Niki Lauda’s first world title in 1975. Can we get your thoughts on Niki? Did you admire him? What did you admire about him if you did?
FV: Niki was a multifaceted guy. I was a fan when I was young, when he won the championship in ’75, ’77, and even ’84. I was a fan. Then I had the mega chance to work next to him when I was doing DTM and then later in F1. I think it’s a privilege because it was someone who was performant everywhere– as a driver, team principal, or whatever position – and also into the business. I think he’s an iconic guy.
Q: Laurent, if we could come to you now. This wasn’t such an easy race for Red Bull last year. How confident are you of having a better run this time around?
Laurent MEKIES: We are not normally in excess of confidence after FP1. You’re right, last year was probably one of the most difficult races of the season for us. As much as nobody likes this sort of race where you end up underperforming or hitting issues you’re not expecting – as we did last year here in Monza –– it’s always the best way to progress. It’s always the best way to unlock more in your understanding. So it’s an important weekend for us to see, 12 months later, how much we’ve gone around the specific issues we had last year here. Too early to respond to that after only FP1, but it’s something we have well present in our head – what happened last year here.
Q: Just what was Max saying after the session? Does he feel that the car is born well for this type of track this year?
LM: You know, he doesn’t feel a fundamental difference from what the characteristics have been all year. Even here, with a lower level of downforce, he found again the same characteristics, the same limitations that we’ve been pretty much dealing with with this car this season. However, are we visibly running into the same sort of additional issues as last year? It doesn’t seem to be the case, but again, it’s super early days, with only FP1.
Q: You’ve been in the new job for, what is it, a couple of months? Tell us where your focus has been in that time. What have you learned?
LM: The real focus has been – a) we don’t want to underestimate how long it takes to truly know a team and a company. It doesn’t happen in one or two months. So the focus, as we said already in Spa, has been: let’s try to meet as many people as possible. Let’s try to get an understanding. Of course, now six weeks have passed, so it’s a bit better than Spa. Every day, you understand a bit better how the team is working. Every day, you meet more people, start building an understanding about the flows and the structure. Now, what we’re trying to do with the team is to map together what we need to unlock next to go back to an even more competitive scenario. That’s where the focus is now. The first phase was observation only; now the second phase is building with the team a map of what we need to unlock, to unlock more.
Q: Laurent, how different is the job of team principal at Red Bull Racing compared to what you were doing before at RB?
LM: I think I had given you that type of answer a few months ago, when wearing the Visa Cash App Racing Bulls colours. It’s very easy to underestimate how extreme you need to go with the car – and therefore with a team, with a company – when you look for ultimate performance. You find a team trying to extremise every aspect of the car and every aspect of the company to try to get that last bit of lap time. Of course, it’s not a high return on investment – it’s a lot of effort for that last bit. But that’s what top teams are about. Every race weekend, you have a very simple answer to your weekend: did you win or not? We got this P2 in Zandvoort. We got lucky—or rather, Lando got unlucky with what happened there—but that’s the only question you ask yourself on Monday morning: what were we missing? I guess in terms of mindset that’s the biggest difference between the midfield and what’s happening at the front is that you’re targeting ultimate performance. Until you reach it, the answer is that you didn’t do everything you could.
Q: Ayao, can we talk about Zandvoort first of all—double points finish. Given where you started that race, how much of a surprise was the end result?
Ayao KOMATSU: Yeah. Obviously, end result—it’s very difficult to control yourself. After we didn’t maximise our potential in qualifying, our mindset was: what can we do from P18, pit lane, to put ourselves in the best position? If the chance comes along, we can score points. That was the obvious choice for us. The message after qualifying was that… Up until qualifying, we showed some speed—very good speed in FP3 and Q1 Run 1. So we knew we had the car and the drivers to do it, but we had to put everything together, and we didn’t do that as a team from Friday to qualifying. We said, “Sunday, we cannot give up.” We start from the back, but every single lap we need to focus and trying to think how to get the result out of this race. After the race, I was really happy. Communication in the race was good, everyone worked together, supported each other, focus was there. Both drivers – I cannot fault them. We asked them to do certain things to help each other, and they did it. Execution was great. That’s what I was looking for, and that’s what we delivered on Sunday.
Q: This is a pattern we’ve seen from Haas before this year – battling from the back of the grid. I think of Ollie in Bahrain, for example, going from 20th to 10th. How much of that success is down to the operational changes you made in the garage over the winter?
AK: I don’t want to be too negative, but unfortunately I have to look at it the other way. When we start from the back but produce a result on Sunday, it quite often means we didn’t maximise the potential on Saturday. In Bahrain, we didn’t perform as a team in qualifying. We knew we had good speed there. We knew Ollie could do it – same with Esteban. In terms of operationally, yes, we changed the trackside team quite a lot this year. We knew it would take time to get performance out of everyone, and we’re still doing that. But we wanted to do it this year rather than next year, when there’s a huge regulation change. When we perform on Sunday, we’ve got to do that every session. We communicate very well together, and I think we’re all aligned inside the team. This weekend, everyone is very focused from lap one, FP1, on how to get everything out of the car and driver.
QUESTIONS FROM THE FLOOR
Q: (Fred Ferret – L’Equipe) Question to Fred Vasseur. How important is it as a Team Principal to bring confidence to Lewis before Monza, if he needs some?
FV: It’s not just for Lewis. It’s true, I think, for everybody that confidence is key in our business. He’s coming after two or three difficult weekends, for different reasons, but it’s always key to bring back confidence to someone. I think that was part of the contribution from the Tifosi all over the week in Milan.
Q: (Ian Parkes – RacingNews365.com) Question for Laurent. Speaking with Isack yesterday in his media session, he’s clearly a driver high on confidence. He has, however, made it clear that should Red Bull be considering another driver change this season, he does not want that to be the case. If you are going to promote him, he wants it to be at the start of next season. Is that your thinking as well – that Yuki’s got the seat for the rest of the season, and if there is to be another driver changed it will only be over the winter?
LM: I think the short answer is yes. We made it very clear, very public, that we have time with our driver decision. We have enough drivers between the driver programmes to cover quite a few scenarios for next year, and we don’t have real reasons to rush into decisions. To your point – no, we do not plan to change during the season. Yuki has been making a good step in the last three races. We all want more, but he’s doing a good job. He was, for the first time, back in the points after seven races in Zandvoort. He was close enough to Max in Budapest, and had his best qualifying with the team in Spa. So he’s on a positive trend. It’s obviously extremely nice to watch Isack’s progress in the Racing Bulls car. To see him performing at the level he did in the last race was a fantastic demonstration of how much progress he’s made this season. But really, we are relaxed about the driver topic, because fundamentally we have all our cards on the Red Bull side, and we can take a few more weeks – or months – to decide. Of course, that doesn’t mean we have to wait until the last race to decide, because we respect that it might impact our drivers one way or another. But for sure, we feel we have time right now.