13-Sep: At the Friday press conference for the Italian GP,
Paolo Martinelli indicated the next year's Ferrari engine will be
an evolution of the current one and said "Well, I think next year's
engine will be an evolution of the current one and as usual, normally, we
start the first tests in September and normally use October and November
to make developments and our target is to work on reliability with long
runs simulation etc on the dyno and later on the track between December
this year and January 2003."
Martinelli doesn't expect they will be changing the V angle of their
engine and said "Probably not but I think we have some interesting
evolutions while maintaining the same V-angle."
As for when he expects the new car to be ready, Martinelli said "We
have no exact schedule at the moment. Of course, we are targeting to be
ready early February, that is the normal target, but we have no precise
date at the moment."
Patrick Head confirmed that BMW are working with
Williams in areas other than the engine side and said "There is some
collaboration on the transmission side, but we are looking at some other
areas and have been looking at some other areas. BMW have obviously got
big resources but are not specialists in Formula One racing cars, but they
have certainly got a lot of very capable people."
Head confirmed that the team is working on a new transmission for next
year and said "Well, we are certainly doing a new transmission for
next year but I don't know very much about Ferrari's transmission, but
obviously we're not happy with the results we have achieved this year.
We've obviously spent a lot of time analysing why and initially wrote out
a specification for the new car and that's steadily being developed and
we're working towards that and only next year we'll see whether we've made
a good step forward."
As for which other areas are Williams concentrating on for next year's
car, Patrick just said "Lack of speed. Nothing else that I'm going to
talk about."
When asked when Williams are expecting to test their 2003 car, he said
"We are testing with developments of the current car, we will run a
current car with the new engine in it fairly soon, which will have a
modified version of the current gearbox on the back of it and then later
this year we will be running another version of the current car with next
year's engine in it with the basis of next year's transmission in it as
well, and then it is all a planned stage, but we certainly have a date for
the first running of the new car and it is certainly in 2003, as a
complete unit."
Patrick doesn't expect Williams to beat Ferrari here and said "The
higher speed circuits have been circuits that have suited us quite well in
the past and different types of layout of car can sometimes optimise their
performance towards one end of the downforce scale or the other. Obviously
at the moment one tends to try and optimise things towards the higher
downforce end because that is where the predominance of the circuits are
but over the last few years we have generally been more competitive at
Hockenheim and Monza than we have at other tracks. But where as last year
I think the Ferrari had very definite weaknesses, they have done a very
good job of attending to those weaknesses, so I don't think the Ferrari
has types of circuit at which it is weak anymore. I think we might be
closer than previously, but the gap technically between the Ferrari this
year and our package is big and I don't see any reason why it should
suddenly be reversed."
Head also talked about the difficulty in fitting the HANS device to Juan
Pablo Montoya and said "We did run at the last Monza test with a HANS
device on each driver. It wasn't actually strapped to the helmet because
we weren't ready for that stage, but Ralf was pretty happy with it and a
single seater race car, particularly a Formula One car, is much more
difficult to an Indycar or a NASCAR because you have got to deal with
Monaco, with the driver literally looking sideways at Station Hairpin and
that is not what happens on a high speed oval. In the case of Ralf he said
he was happy with it, didn't have any problems, and that was I think the
fourth or fifth iteration of HANS device that we had produced for him. In
the case of Juan Pablo, it was completely impossible for him because
firstly he has got a very short neck and secondly, when he drives, where
as Ralf articulates from the shoulder, when Juan Pablo turns the wheel the
shoulder comes up hard against the helmet, so we have got to find a
structure that is strong enough to take a very high longitudinal load in
which we have no cross sectional area, so it is going to be a serious
problem to work out how to produce a HANS device that will work for Juan
Pablo whereas we have certainly achieved that for Ralf."
Pat Symonds confirmed Renault are changing the
architecture of their engines but didn't get into a lot of detail and said
"It depends how you define architecture. The thing that people seize
on with our engine is the V-angle. We're not changing the V-angle next
year. Yes, the architecture is changing if you like to use that word but
we don't see the V-angle as such as being a fundamental problem and
therefore that's not an area that we are attacking."
And for 2004, Symonds said "Well 2004 is a different ballgame really
because we are looking at engines that are going to have to last 800
kilometres. Now again, I don't think the V-angle is fundamental in making
an engine last 800 kilometres but there certainly are what you have termed
architectural features that will have to change. Yes."
Symonds also confirmed that the 2003 car will be running in early December
and said "The R23 transmission ran on the dyno for the first time two
weeks ago, it has now done about two Grand Prix distances. The RS23, the
engine, should be running on the dyno in about three weeks. Our aim is to
run the R23 as a complete car, believe it or not, in week 49 of this year.
But that will have the R202 bodywork on it, so I am not sure whether it
answers your question. The car that you will see in Australia, we will try
to shake down just before we go I guess."
Geoffrey Willis talked about the changes he
made at BAR since joining the team back in March of this year and said
"We've had to look at every part of the way the team is working,
obviously with me particularly in the design side and the engineering side
of the car. Really, we've rebuilt the whole design team. The car was not
good enough in any area and it took a while to make that clear to the
people in the team. We decided to have a substantial re-organisation in
the team. During that time we reduced the size of the team and as part of
that re-organisation have now rebuilt the entire design group just in time
to get them together for next year's car and we have a lot of work to do
because, as I made clear to the entire team, really everybody was
responsible for the poor performance of the car. It was not a competitive
car in any area so everybody has to look equally towards improving their
game."
He added that the team has been built up and he expects a big improvement
for BAR next year and said "Yes, we have, we've recruited a few
senior people from other teams. We've benefited from some people's
misfortunes in that and I feel that we now have a very strong team. We
just need a little bit of time to build the whole team together. If I can
get 75 per cent of from where I'm going to where I want to get, I hope I
can do about 75 per cent of that with next year's car and then work on
after that. I think we can make quite a substantial improvement. My
feeling is that it's going to be harder work going between 2003 and
2004."
As for when next year's BAR will be ready, Willis said "I shouldn't
say exactly the date we are planning to do. For us it is possibly slightly
different because we do have so much work to do in getting a properly
designed car out. We are fortunate that the regulations are pretty stable
so quite a lot of things that one would work on really early. We have a
totally new engine from our engine partner for next year so I am certainly
trying to set us up to have a substantial amount of testing time available
in the first two months of next year."
Gabriele Tredozzi talked about how he manages such a
small design team at Minardi and said "It's a very small team. The
total number is around 100 people, 110, still the same from many years
ago, and it's been a good job to remain at this level, because sometimes
it was very hard. The team worked well, the drawing office is not a lot of
people but we work well together, make a good job with good experience and
this is one of the keys of the team. The level of the performance is very
high in Formula One and you cannot gain the performance in one year. You
need to move forward step by step in every area and it's not easy for a
small team because you must also be conservative because you can't take
any risk in the beginning and don't make a big mistake, because the power
of the team is not very high and you cannot come back in those
conditions."
Naturally, next year's Minardi will be an evolution of the current model
and Tredozzi explained "Yeah, sure, the car will be an evolution
because the stable rules for us is very good, because when you have a big
change in the rules for the little teams it is more difficult. So there
will be evolution in every area because you cannot gain the performance in
one place in the car. Everywhere, weight, aerodynamic efficiency,
stiffness of the car, everywhere. We must improve everywhere. Sure, we
need more wind tunnel time, this is sure, because the only wind tunnel
time available is not a lot, it's a few days, one week per month, five
days only and this is all."
Gabriele also indicated that last year they lost a number of good people
but they have managed to recover from that loss and said "The team is
good. This is my opinion also, this year's was very good job because also
many people, good people, left the team and last year at this time, it was
in very bad condition. We work hard, everybody worked very hard, and I'm
very happy for the people in the team."
As for when next year's Minardi will be ready, Tredozzi said "Good
question, big question. Normally our car is ready in the beginning of
February, but it is not easy to say now when we will be testing next
year's car. What we can do is we will try the best to have our car ready
as early as we can but you cannot have it ready too early to make a bad
car. You must wait the maximum you can to use all the possibilities you
have. It must be ready two weeks before the first race to make a proper
test but this is very the limit and for us we will be very close to
this."
13-Sep: What the teams and
drivers said following Friday practice at Monza ... Report
13-Sep: Italian GP
– 2nd Friday Practice Session: Michael Schumacher sets the fastest
time of the session ahead of Rubens Barrichello and Kimi Raikkonen. Eddie
Irvine, Juan Pablo Montoya and Mika Salo make the top 6 ... Timed Results
... Report ... Notes
13-Sep: Italian GP
– 1st Friday Practice Session: Michael Schumacher sets the fastest
time of the session ahead of Juan Pablo Montoya and Ralf Schumacher. Pedro
de la Rosa, Jarno Trulli and Eddie Irvine make the top 6 ... Timed Results
... Report ... Notes
Friday
Practice Session 1
Friday Practice Session 2
Saturday Practice Session 1
Saturday Practice Session 2 Qualifying Session
Warm-up Session Race
11
AM Monza Time / 9 AM GMT
1 PM Monza Time / 11 AM GMT
9:00 AM Monza Time / 7:00 AM GMT
10:15 AM Monza Time / 8:15 AM GMT 1:00 PM Monza Time / 11:00 AM GMT 9:30 AM Monza Time / 7:30 AM GMT 2:00 PM Monza Time / 12 PM GMT
