24 Jul 2012

Dr Vijay Mallya reflects on the the season so far and the team's performance last weekend in Germany.

Dr Mallya, give us your verdict on the first half of the season?
I’ve said many times already that this is the best start we have ever had to a season in terms of points scored. So from that perspective I’m satisfied and proud of what we have achieved in the first ten races. Our drivers are doing an excellent job and we are working well as a team so there are lots of reasons to be positive. But at the same time I’m all too aware that we have a big fight on our hands to reclaim our sixth position in the championship.

Do you think the German Grand Prix was representative of the team’s competitiveness at the moment?
I think it’s hard to judge too much from one race because this year we’ve seen most teams experiencing big variances in terms of performance based on circuit characteristics and their understanding of the tyres. In Germany it seemed that others were able to manage their tyres better than us because with Nico we were always debating whether to stop two or three times. With Paul, we couldn’t manage consistent performance during each stint so it’s something we will try and understand before we get to Hungary.

How is the team approaching this weekend?
People suggest that Hungary might play more to our strengths, but regardless of whether it suits us we just need to be ahead of the teams that we are fighting with in the championship and score points. If you take our immediate competitors, Sauber have had three races without points so far, Williams have had four, and we’ve had three. That’s what we need to address: we need to be scoring at every race.

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