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Singapore GP: Friday Press Conference

NEWS STORY
18/09/2015

Toto, maybe we can start with you. You had Pharrell Williams in your garage this evening but are you happy with the performance of your car - fourth for one of your drivers and seventh for the other and apparently giving something away in the long runs to maybe Red Bull and Ferrari?
Toto Wolff: Yeah that was a pretty spot on analysis. We are not with the performance today. We haven't really made the tyre work in the way we should on the one-lap performance and on the long runs either. We have seen some spectacular laps from the Red Bulls. Yeah, just need to get our heads together and assess what's happening.

It is of course the time of year when we start looking forward to next year and the future. Do you envisage making any changes in your roster of customer teams from the ones you have today?
TW: This is also a situation, which is a dynamic situation and we are looking at what is happening with curiosity. Of course we have always supported independent teams, so depending on what's also happening with Lotus and Renault we will be looking at the situation of supply for next year.

OK, thanks for that. Claire, coming to you: 188 points on the board at the moment, this time last year, after 12 rounds, 150 on the board; third in the Constructors' looking reasonably solid. So, are you proud of your progress or frustrated by your missed opportunities this year?
Claire Williams: Always proud of the progress our team makes. I think that we have obviously made a couple of mistakes, certainly in the past couple of races, around our pit stops. But we know the issues, we identified them and we are always very open and honest about what they are and as long as when we next come to a race track we don't make the same mistakes then I'm happy with the work the team does. As you said, we are ahead on the number of points we've scored so far this season versus last year. We were fourth in the Constructors last year versus third at this point now and we believe that we can close that gap to Ferrari and that is our agenda and our objective for this weekend. We've got to get some more points and extend that gap to Red Bull as well.

In terms of moving forward for 2016, you've obviously got the same drivers, that's been confirmed, what are you demanding from your technical personnel to make that step change you need to challenge?
CW: A quicker race car. Pat and his team do a really great job with the resources that they have available to them. We obviously have to do a better job commercially to bring in some more revenue for them, to give them a stronger budget. But they know the job in hand and obviously we have another year, a final year of stable technical regulations ahead of the changes that are coming in '17 and we need to capitalise on that stability in order to make sure that we bring the best car to the track when we start racing again next year. This is a good opportunity for us to galvanise where we are now and the position and the competitiveness that we have and to drive it forward.

Thank you for that. Coming to you Monisha: great start to the season with those points in Australia. Then you got caught up by some of your competitors. Recently you've been back in the points and here in Singapore you have a big upgrade. Tell us about why your season has gone the way it has?
Monisha Kaltenborn: Well, if you as a team have certain limitations on resources, it might be finances or personnel, you have to make sure you spend it on the right things that are viable for you to implement. So we knew that we put emphasis on the start of the season, knowing very well that in the course of the season when we tried to being a package in later, [which is] what we did, the competitors are going to catch up and probably we will be passed down the ladder, which we were, so it was expected in a way. But we focused on our route and brought this package now to Singapore and what we're seeing, as a basis, we're happy with but we understand that we still have to work a bit more on the set-up, analyse the data better and maybe not exactly at this race but maybe at the next races we will see the full potential.

There is a lot of discussion at the moment on power units, costs and the best way forward for all teams in Formula One. What are your personal thoughts?
MK: Well, we've always had the view that you had to bring to the costs down. We had reached already the point with the Resource Restriction Agreement that we felt was a good basis. We've seen that with the new powertrain costs have hiked up that much, so we've always supported the idea that you try to bring a kind of cost cap on the engine prices, so we think that is a move in the right direction.

Franz, talking about engines, where are you on engine supply for next year. It's now late September; are your engineers anticipating a change of power unit in their 2016 design?
Franz Tost: As Renault decided not to supply us anymore with engines of course we have to take into consideration to change the engine.

Can you tell us any more?
FT: Confidential talks are continuing, therefore I don't know at the moment which engine we will have in the car next year. I hope that we will get a result soon but currently we have confidential negotiations and as I mentioned before I hope we come to a result as soon as possible.

Your drivers have started in the top 10 on the grid on 10 occasions this season but you've still got just 35 points on the board. What do you have to do in the final races to improve the situation? Is it just reliability?
FT: It's reliability, because we didn't finish many races where we could have scored a lot of points because of reliability issues and I hope that we as a team and our partners will have it under control for the rest of the season and that we can catch up and finish races. For sure it's not in the hands of the drivers. If we give them a reliable car they will score points.

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