Interview With Martin Whitmarsh, CEO Formula 1, Vodafone McLaren Mercedes
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May 12, 2008
McLaren
Following the Turkish Grand Prix, Martin Whitmarsh, CEO Formula 1, Vodafone McLaren Mercedes, discusses how the weekend unfolded for teammates Lewis and Heikki.
Question: Vodafone McLaren Mercedes might not have won the Turkish Grand Prix, but it was a very positive weekend in many ways. Let’s start with Lewis Hamilton’s second place and his unusual three-stop strategy. Talk us through that.
Martin Whitmarsh: ”It was a decision we took on Saturday, before the third free practice session. We had concerns about tyre durability, although obviously we didn’t advertise the fact. It affected Lewis in particular and we took a number of preventative measures. We increased tyre pressures on Saturday morning, but although that addressed the problem to a degree it didn’t so do sufficiently to give us the margin we needed.”
Question: hat particular aspects of Istanbul Park prompted Lewis’s tyre problems?
Martin Whitmarsh: ”The simple answer is Turn Eight. We’re very strong in high-speed corners and our chassis generates a lot of front-end grip. Last year we had a chunking problem with the tyre, this time it was sidewall delamination. We’re generating high vertical loads through those corners and that’s the problem. Bridgestone acknowledged as much, but they are good, strong partners and we’ll continue to work with them to make sure we don’t have any recurrence.”
Question:Heikki was theoretically able to run a two-stop strategy. Are there marked differences between his driving style and Lewis’s?
Martin Whitmarsh: ”They run a slightly different set-up that puts a little bit more load on Lewis’s front tyres. He was reasonably aggressive through Turn Eight and very quick, but he changed his style and racing line on Saturday. But on a circuit like this, once you see there’s a tyre concern you have to put safety first. We took a decision and it was the right thing to do with the information we had available at the time.”
Question:Lewis claims this was the finest performance of his F1 career to date…
Martin Whitmarsh: ”My memory’s so short that I don’t want to draw comparisons! It was his finest race this year and he did it with the odds stacked against him. He was just flat out and really took the race to Ferrari.”
Question:With a better qualifying lap, Lewis might have started from pole with a three-stop fuel load. Might the race have been winnable from there?
Martin Whitmarsh: ”In a simple time trial, the difference between two stops and three is about five seconds over a full race distance. In reality, though, it’s more than that because you don’t always have the most co-operative of traffic. It was clearly a disadvantage to three-stop, otherwise it would have been a more fashionable strategy, so it would have been difficult to win even from pole. Given the way Lewis performed, though, he might just have done it.”
