Q+A with Adrian Newey

After five races in the 2008 FIA Formula One season, Red Bull Racing's Adrian Newey looks back on the beginning of the season, and is of course looking forward to the most glamorous race of the season: the Monaco Grand Prix.

Adrian Newey: "We can be reasonably satisfied with where we are after the first quarter of the season. The field has tightened up and we are significantly closer to the top than last year, if you look at lap time difference between our times and that of pole position and the race winner.

"Certainly the pack behind the top three teams is very tight and quite often at the end of Q2, there will be just a couple of tenths between eighth and fourteenth places. The slightest slip up can really affect your Sunday afternoon."

"Generally, we are reasonably happy that the car has lived up to our expectations. One area where the car is struggling a little bit is in terms of traction and we are working hard on finding out why. Other than that, the general package is performing much as we had hoped for.

"In terms of aerodynamics, we are also on target. Last year we struggled with the correlation between wind tunnel figures and what we saw on track. This year has been much better on that front. There are still some differences we would like to eliminate, but they are much less marked than last year."

"Monaco is of course a high downforce circuit and this weekend we will have a new front wing to balance the higher downforce rear wing which we had already, even though we had no requirement to run it at maximum so far this year. Then for Canada, the lowest downforce circuit we will have tackled so far this year, we will revert to the same front wing as used in Turkey but trimmed to a different profile.

"Those are what I consider the normal race to race specific changes, but in addition to that we have some new aero and mechanical parts for Monaco, including a revised suspension package, which we evaluated at the Ricard test last week. Some of the parts will specifically tackle those traction issues I mentioned.

"Monaco is also quite tough on brake calliper cooling. It is a strange circuit as brake cooling per se is not too much of a problem but the callipers get very hot because of lots of fairly light applications. The other key element is down to the undulating nature of the circuit, which therefore puts a premium on how you look at the mechanical set up of the car."

"You can divide development into dealing with the lack of traction control into various areas. Firstly there is engine mapping to make the engine as driveable as possible which is on-going for all engine manufacturers and involves us too, as ultimately how the chassis performs can be affected by how the engine delivers its power. The second element is trying to make the car more driver friendly in terms of its basic handling which is down to suspension and aerodynamics.

"People talk about the loss of traction control, but actually it should be loss of electronic control aids. The most obvious element is the lack of engine power modulation on corner exit but equally if not more importantly we were all using the engine as a stability control aid on corner entry where everyone was effectively running a form of rear wheel ABS, so that if the rear wheels began to lock up the engine would be accelerated to stop the wheels locking.

"To some extent that would be carried into the entry stage of the corner. Without this, it puts a premium on the chassis to cover up what we were able to do electronically before."

"I think everyone looks forward to Monaco. It's an idiosyncratic place, but the fact it is so different to anywhere else we go means it is always something to look forward to."