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USA GP: Friday Press Conference

NEWS STORY
18/06/2005

Peter, first of all, we all thought your heart was totally in your racing and your team. So can I ask why do you want to sell your team?
Peter Sauber: It's principally not my intention to sell the team but I think it's very important to do the right things at the right moment. Is that enough for you?

Because I've heard you wanted to safeguard the future of the team to some extent, to make sure the future of the team is safe.
PS: That's normal. I follow two goals. I think it's important to make progress on the sporting side and that has to be the intention for every team. And the other point is it's important to keep the infrastructure and the people.

On another controversial subject, obviously there is a lot of interest here, Jacques Villeneuve, a former Indy 500 winner. Is his position safe within the team?
PS: Since the beginning of the season, there were constantly reports that we would replace Jacques. The fact is that he is still here, as you can see, and there is nothing to add to this.

Nick, Danica Patrick is the big name over here in the States, there was the possibility of her running in a BAR Honda, which isn't happening. Is there a possibility of her running in the future in the BAR Honda?
Nick Fry: We haven't got anything planned at the moment. Clearly she is doing a good job for Honda over here and wants to focus on running the car tomorrow and in the end it just proved totally impractical. Danica had to be in Phoenix, where she is at the moment, and she had a sponsor's obligation. I think, as you saw yesterday, she causes a huge amount of media interest here in the States. So nothing planned at the moment.

You unfortunately received a ban from a couple races earlier on in the season. Looking back now, how did that affect the team morale?
NF: In terms of morale, not much. It's amazing how well the team has pulled together. That's not only just the people within the team but the support we've had from all the sponsors has been frankly absolutely outstanding. That's all of them, from the small ones right through to the owners of the team. So I think with that support, it's been relatively easy for everyone to pull together. But I think these things you just put behind you and get on with it. I think the team has an unbelievable fighting spirit. I think you saw the effort that guys put in to change Takuma's gearbox during the race last week to get him a bit further up qualifying. That was an indication of how good the fighting spirit is. So BAR is a team that has had a few knocks over the years and spent the first few years being extremely unsuccessful and I think that has led to the team being strong. We lost a bit of momentum, which was unfortunate, probably more than we anticipated, but the last race wasn't bad and we're hopeful for this weekend.

Frank, how do you see the current performance of the team, because it seems to be a little bit up and down?
Frank Williams: Well, we were making quite a bit of progress until the last race, we seemed to struggle there, indeed we did struggle there, probably going to be the same here. But we will be back in due course and in Europe we will have more performance.

We saw in the European Grand Prix, for example, you were on pole position there.
FW: Well, as you saw, we stopped quite early in the race, but tactically it did help our car to be quite competitive.

One of the questions that you have been asked many times I'm sure is about BMW but I'm not going to ask that. Are you actively seeking another engine partner, are you talking to other engine manufacturers?
FW: I can't really talk about that. We're waiting for BMW to provide an answer, which we anticipate will be next week. After that we'll have to think about which direction we want to go in, if we need to think about it.

Ron, a race ago, before the Canadian Grand Prix, in theory, if Kimi had won all the races thereafter and Alonso would have come second, Kimi still wouldn't have been champion. Do you think there's a problem with the scoring points? It's ridiculous to say at that stage that situation existed. Do you think there's a problem with the scoring system?
RD: Not really. I think it's the same for everybody and it places a great emphasis on reliability. I think that is something that is a good thing for Formula One. I did quite enjoy the period of time in which you were able to drop some races so that the odd car not finishing a race wasn't penalising you too severely. So if I had to solely and exclusively decide to change that element of Formula One, I'd probably leave the points alone and maybe it just be the 16 races, the top 12 races or something count. I always felt that was interesting for the teams but I recognised it was somewhat confusing for the public and the media reporting to the public. So I could see the wisdom in changing it, but finishing races now has almost gone the other way as Nick's just pointed out. The concept of changing a gearbox during the race in order to affect your qualifying position is really in some ways perverse. In one way we're saying one engine does two races and then another you're saying you can do anything else, etc., etc., even during the race. It was a strategy well executed because, of course, I think they finished eleventh or something with the level of dropouts and that was well worth the effort.

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