Tuesday February 1st, 2000

Q: Is this car evolutionary, or revolutionary?

Mike Gascoyne: It's an evolution of last year's car. It's lower, it's lighter, we've changed it in every area which is what you need to do to stay competitive in Formula One, but it's certainly an evolution of last year's car. It's fine tuning, but that doesn't mean to say that we haven't made big steps forward.

The car was pretty heavy last year but we introduced a new rear end which reduced the weight quite a lot and we have a significantly updated gearbox this year which is an even bigger gain than the new rear end. Last year's car ended up probably half a second behind the big two, and you'd be pretty stupid to throw away the technology that was that good.

We've not been conservative, but we've made a lot of small gains which we think are going to add up to a good car. We hope that we've done it without taking any risks and going backwards. We feel that we understood what made the 199 a better car and we've done more of that.

Q: The Mugen-Honda engine is lighter; what effect does that have?

Gascoyne: They've lowered the crank height which has allowed us to lower the gearbox and other things so that means that the centre of gravity has been lowered which is a performance gain. Similarly, putting the weight in the centre of the car lowers the polar moment which is a fundamental performance gain. Any time you lose weight and lower weight allows us to optimise the car.

Q: What differences have you seen in the 18 months since you took over from Gary Anderson?

Gascoyne: The team has grown and the budget has gone up due to our success. I think we've certainly put a lot more effort and a lot more resources into the aerodynamics programme and all the other R&D programmes. We haven't just grown as a technical organisation. I think we've become a lot more focused, more organised.

We've probably doubled our time in the wind tunnel from 18 months ago, and we've probably doubled the manpower available to do it properly. We've put a lot of effort into the wind tunnel programme and I think the development of the 199 and hopefully this car are proof of that.

Q: Eddie talks about having more resources. What has that meant?

Gascoyne: We never have enough. We have a technical programme now that we hope leads and doesn't follow. But if you think of 60 things that you need to do and you only have the budget to do the top 10, you will still produce a good racing car. If you can do 20 of those things, you will produce a better car but you need to do them all - even if they might not all work. Of course, the teams that we are competing against have those resources. Having said that, our resources have got better and better, we proved that last year, and maybe if some of the key people can think harder and do a better job we can get up there.