Abu Dhabi GP: Friday Press Conference

02/11/2012

Today's press conference with Ross Brawn (Mercedes), Antonio Cuquerella (HRT), Pat Fry (Ferrari), Andrew Green (Force India) and Remi Taffin (Renault Sport F1).

A question to you all about engines at this stage. It gets towards the sharp engine of the season and people are running out of mileage on their engines. Perhaps you could give us an update on how you are with engines at this stage?
Andrew Green: We're completely to plan. As we worked it out from race one, so no issues for us at the moment.

Antonio?
Antonio Cuquerella: Yes, same for us. We're going to start this race, both cars with the last engine and it's all according to plan as we planned in the winter.

Pat?
Pat Fry: Yes, exactly the same really. It's going to plan. I think we have one engine left to play but touch wood it should be fine.

Ross?/i}
Ross Brawn: As with everyone else, you manage it through the whole season. So you're making adjustments and corrections as you go through the year and we're OK.

Remi, your teams?
Remi Taffin: Let's say since last race we're on plan. We've obviously had up and downs during the year but we're all fine. We also have some engines left obviously for six of our eight drivers, one left, which we should use for this weekend. So it will be up to eight this weekend for all our customers and we should be OK for the rest of the year. Obviously we have to manage the mileage on Fridays but yeah, we're on target.

Andrew, first of all, Force India seems to be fairly comfortable in the midfield but what does it take to get the team towards the sharper end of the championship?
AG: Quite simple: you've got to out-develop the guys in front of you.

Is that money? Is that personnel?
AG: It's everything. But ultimately you need the money to invest in the team, in the hardware and in the people and ultimately that will increase your rate of development. That's what you need to do, that's what we would need to do if we were to start to target these guys in front of me [Fry, Brawn]. It's something we've discussed with the shareholders at great length, telling us where they want to be, what they want to do. There's more discussions happening very shortly and hopefully we'll be able to announce something in near future.

Have you still got developments coming this year or are you working one hundred per cent on the new car now?
AG: Oh, we've been on the new car for several months now. There's been no development on this car since the shutdown effectively.

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