MW: Well, again, you never know fuel loads so we try to be realistic or we always assume they are lugging about 150 kilos of fuel on their long runs. I don't know if they were or they weren't. I think also as you improve the balance of the car, as a driver learns how to drive that circuit, I think Jenson in particular did a good job of looking after the tires. It was a circuit where the tire degradation wasn't linear, they fell off when they were worn. That is an interesting thing. That is not a criticism of our friends from Pirelli. I think it is fact, just as we have here. The challenge for the engineers and drivers now is 'It's the same for all of us, now we have got to try and exploit that the faster cars will tend to put more load, more potential to wear the tires, but, between us, when we have to try and get the right balance, look after the tires, and see how we can exploit that strategy in the race.'
Q. Christian, what's your reply to that?
Christian HORNER: Certainly on the Friday in Japan, McLaren's single lap performance looked mightily impressive and the opposite on the long run. Our long run pace looked as impressive as McLaren's short run pace. Of course, you are trying to find a trade off between qualifying and the race and the tires have been a challenge this year. A good challenge for the engineers and certainly the behavior of the tire on Sunday wasn't quite perhaps what we expected certainly from the lessons learned on what we had seen on Friday. It is always finding that trade off and at the end of the race it was fascinating to see three cars split by nothing really once the rate had settled down into that final stint. There was plenty of data, feedback and information to go through following the weekend but it has been a trait of this season that you can sometimes think of a Friday that we are looking in really good shape, or vice versa, and things on Sunday can be quite a bit different.
Q. Going back to the result on Sunday which gave you your second Drivers' Championship, which is fantastic, but what has been the reaction within the team and even from Red Bull themselves?
CH: Well it's phenomenal. Sebastian (Vettel) thoroughly deserves the championship and to have done it so early, with four races to go, is a fantastic achievement. The level at which he has performed this year has been absolutely huge in terms of the performance, the consistency that he has managed to achieve. Nine grands prix victories, he has had I think four or five second places, one third, one fourth place, it has been a massive performance rate that he has been scoring at week in and week out. Not all of those victories have been runaway victories. If you think back to Monaco, if you think back to Barcelona, there have been a lot of tough victories that he's had to earn there. But he has been the stand-out driver. The team are hugely proud to have defended his drivers' championship. Of course we celebrated and enjoyed that result in Suzuka with a few fairly poor renditions of various karaoke, but your focus immediately changes to the next target and that target is winning the Constructors'. Both championships carry equal weight to us. I think to the public the prestige sits with the drivers' championship, but I think amongst the teams the Constructors' in many ways is ranked with equal weight. Immediately focus turned following the Japanese race to Korea after a few bleary eyes appeared on Monday morning.
Q. Does the approach change?
CH: No, not at all. I think our approach this year has been very strong. Operationally we have been very strong. I think tactically we have been strong. Our rate of development has been strong. We have won races where we haven't expected to be competitive at, such as Monza and indeed Spa, and going into Japan we had won three on the trot so our approach this weekend will be the same as it has been at the previous 14 or 15 races. That will continue all the way through to the checkered flag in Brazil.
Q. Ross, I don't often spend races in the press room but I was amused to see journalists actually taking pictures of the screens during the Japanese Grand Prix of Michael Schumacher leading a grand prix. The performance oddly enough seems to have improved, in spite of the fact that you have said there wasn't a huge amount of development coming. But have you been heartened by the performance over the last few races, not necessarily from him but from the team?
Ross BRAWN: We are not where we want to be and that's a fact but the guys at Brackley and the team put in a huge effort to maintain where they are. I think from our analysis we are still about the same gap behind Red Bull that we were at the beginning of the season. Now, Christian just talked then about the development rate and the fact that we have managed to maintain that gap I think is a credit to all of our staff as it is not easy and you have seen that some of the teams haven't done that and have fallen further behind. There is a tremendous rate of progress in Formula One and we have managed roughly to keep up that rate of progress but we have got to make a step change in performance to get where we want to get to. It was heartening to see, slightly artificially, of course, because of the pit stops, Michael leading a race, but it was nice to see and certainly from Michael, the last four or five races he has had quite a good run, the incident with (Sergio) Perez in Singapore excepted. But he has done a very, very solid job. It just confirms my view that with the right car both of our drivers can win races and mount challenges so it is for us to produce the car they deserve and we need to produce.
Q. The next grand prix is India. A brand new circuit and no one knows anything about it. How does a team go about preparing for that?
RB: You do gather a lot of information beforehand. We have got circuit maps, we have got as much information as we can. We are doing simulations, we are doing models. We have got some rough work going on, on the driver simulator. Of course, there is not a huge amount of information available yet about the circuit so we are doing all the prep and all the simulations and modelling that we can do so we can go as well prepared as possible. What you can't anticipate is the surface roughness, the bumpiness of the circuit. There are various things that you just can't know about until you get there and you experience it. So just all the normal prep and very similar to what we do at all the other races, except we are lacking a bit of information so we have to make some assumptions.
Q. Because it is an unknown does that give you a better chance of taking on the teams ahead of you?
RB: No. No. I think, if anything, the strengths of the teams come to the fore when they are faced with those sorts of circumstances and I think we are pretty strong in that respect. But I think the top teams can all deal with those new challenges more effectively than the less strong teams.
Q. Christian, Red Bull won one title – or is it better to say one-and-three-quarters – and your drivers used at the moment six engines of the available eight. Are they going to close the year with seven?
CH: Well Renault doesn't give us a refund so we are planning to use all of the engines between now and the end of the year. It is testimony to the reliability, touching wood, that we have had throughout the season that we are in that situation so I think there will be a plan to utilize, probably, one of those engines here and the remaining engine at possibly Abu Dhabi. That's for the engineers to decide. It's at their disposal and we will see. Renault have done a great job this year and it is very different to the situation we were in 12 months ago.