Q: Patrick, was this the perfect weekend?

Patrick Head: Yes, a fantastic drive by Ralf. I think we knew we were in a competitive position. We chose a conservative choice of tyres with the harder compound and obviously put quite a lot of fuel in the car. So it was very good that everything worked out as planned, and very nice that we were battling with Michael and Ferrari on an even basis and coming out on top. After all, Michael has certainly been the outstanding driver of the last ten years, and Ferrari have been the best team for the last one or two seasons.

Since Monaco we have had a massive blitz on reliability and various aspects of the brakes and things like that and it was good to see that work rewarded.

Q: Some of the tracks coming up will suit your car; do you think you have a chance at the championship now?

Head: We are not really thinking about that as we are so far behind, but you never know. A lot depends on whether we can do our job well from a reliability and performance point of view - but we will be trying our hardest.

Q: We have seen Ralf drive a great race today. Just how highly do you rate him now?

Head: I think he is as good as they come really now. I think I was quoted as saying that he could acquire a little bit more wisdom, but I think I might have been pointing that more at Juan Pablo's (Montoya) direction than at Ralf. I mean he has come on a lot from last year to this year, and he is using his brain well.

Q: Is it a serious concern with Juan Pablo now? I mean, just one finish out of eight starts.

Head: It's a serious concern, yes, but there has been a lot of unreliability and a few accidents, but it's up to us to clean our act up and get results from now on.

Q: Did the hot weather help Michelin here?

Head: It certainly didn't hurt us, because we were on the hard compound and that was quite a brave decision that our engineers took in conjunction with Michelin.

Q: How much difference was there in qualifying between the hard and the soft Michelin tyre compounds?

Head: Probably about half a second, so it hurt us on Saturday but paid off in the race.

       The Tyres Boss       

Q: Pierre, this is Michelin's second victory this season. Was it at all unexpected?

Pierre Dupasquier: No, it was not unexpected at all, it was expected. We are fighting the battle every race, so sometimes the tyre works and sometimes it doesn't. So it's very tricky to put everything together to win a Grand Prix.

Q: After qualifying, Ralf Schumacher expressed doubts that he would be fast enough to race brother Michael today. What happened?

Dupasquier: Well Ralf did a very good job and maybe Michael messed up a little bit. Maybe. And maybe our tyres are better than Bridgestone!

       The Engine Man       

Q: Dr. Theissen, after this win, does it mean that your reliability problems are behind you?

Dr. Mario Theissen: Well that doesn't mean that everything is under control. It worked today, and that is an improvement against what we did so far, but it doesn't mean that we can stop pushing on quality control and reliability.

Q: Did Ralf have any problems at all?

Theissen: No, no problems at all. Everything worked out perfectly. He was patient enough to stay behind Michael even though he could have gone a bit quicker. He always knew he could go longer (before his pitstop) than Michael. So once Michael stopped he put in three or four very fast laps and that was enough to get him the lead.

       The Race Engineer       

Q: Sam, when did you first realize you were going to have a good weekend?

Sam Michael: During practice we saw Michael (Schumacher) make two long runs, and it was clear he must have been running with a lot of fuel, about 100 kilos or something, and he was quite slow compared to Juan Pablo, who was also running with 100 kilos. Michael was about half a second slower so that was when we got the first indication that something was going on and that the tyres were very strong.

I think that Michelin did a fantastic job with their prime tyre, we had some problems with blistering on the option tyre on first day, but overall they did a great job really.

Q: What were the factors that allowed Ralf to make such a long first run?

Michael: Well if you follow a process where you are saving brakes you will naturally save fuel as well, so Ralf was naturally in fuel saving mode, and there are a couple of tricks you can do to help that along, so he was well into that all race really. But the strategy was very clear, it was to run as long as possible as we thought the tyre would get quicker and quicker.

Q: You have been with Ralf for a long time now, would you rate this as his best ever drive?

Michael: Probably yes, because everyone was in it, Michael was in it, Mika Hakkinen was in it, he was under a lot of pressure but he handled it perfectly really. He didn't overtake when he didn't have to, put the lap times in when he needed too, a very mature drive.

Q: How do you think your car will go at the next GP in Germany? I know it's a very different type of circuit.

Michael: Very different, I mean Nurburgring is a maximum down force circuit where this is not a minimum down force circuit, like Monza or Hockenheim, but it's lower. Efficiency is very important here, but Nurburgring is back to Monaco type down force. But it's impossible to say just what new bits will be on the car until they are actually on it. We have new bits being tested and coming through all the time.

The only question Sam Michael refused to be drawn on was the exact reason Ralf Schumacher lost so much time to his brother on the restart. By the end of their first flying lap Michael's lead was some 2.6 seconds over his Williams rival. This is how that exchange went.

Q: At the restart did he lose most of that time at the actual start or during the first flying lap?

Michael: During the first flying lap.

Q: Were tyres the reason?

Michael: No.

Q: Driver?

Michael: No.

Q: Can you tell me what it was?

Michael: No. We are 100 percent aware of the problem but its something we don't want to talk about.

Q: So could you have this problem on the first lap of a race?