Nurburgring: Friday Press Conference (team bosses)
Q. Pascal, you've had an interesting career path, from a tire company now almost to find yourself as technical director. How has your job changed since Mike Gascoyne left?
Pascal Vasselon: I guess we have to start working a little bit more. Since Mike left, I have taken over most of Mike's responsibilities except the electronic group which went to the engine department, to give a little bit more work to Luca Marmorini and that's it.
Q. And it must be an interesting experience for you working with Bridgestone as well, given that you were with Michelin! What have you learned?
PV: I was really looking forward to working with Bridgestone, but at the end, it's amazing to see how two different groups of people, with very different cultures and coming from two different parts of the world, at the end can achieve very similar performances with different technologies, with different methods. But what can also be said is that putting together some Michelin experience and some Bridgestone experience, there's still a lot to understand and discover about race tires.
Q. We were talking yesterday with Ralf about the B-version of the current car; when are we likely to see that?
PV: It's still planned to arrive at Monaco. We did the roll-out last week. It went pretty well so we are still on schedule to introduce it in Monaco.
Q. Is that car pretty vital to the team at the moment?
PV: Of course it's always important to introduce a new car. This one, I would say, is a logical mechanical evolution of what we did last year with the 105B, so most of the changes are mechanical. Of course we have a new monocoque, that's why it's a new car, but there are other differences, that we have no more keel at the moment. We don't expect a big improvement with this car, simply because most of it is mechanical, but now we will have a much better basis to continue the development of the aero package. More….