Sometimes work can be decidedly surreal.
I walked into office on Thursday afternoon to see a memo marked 'Urgent - Please cover' on my desk. I looked at it wearily for a half second, read the first three words, and my eyes physically popped out. I then spent a half hour trying to figure out if it was an elaborate hoax.
Two hours later, on a Thursday afternoon, I was sitting around a conference table with a dozen journalists in Mumbai. In front of us, on a big screen via videoconference set up by Tata Racing, was the Williams.F1 team.
Yes, you read that right. From the Williams F1 Corporate Center and factory in Oxfordshire, four people sat facing us: Team principal Sir Frank Williams, his drivers Mark Webber and Nico Rosberg, and test-driver Narain Karthikeyan. Here's some of the conversation we shared over the afternoon:
Sir Frank kicked things off. "Hello and good to see you on this very good television screen here. Hope you can see us as well as we can see you. We're all quite anxious to have a good weekend at our home Grand Prix, the British Grand Prix at Silverstone, and we're very keen to see how it goes. We have a good car and setup, and we were very competitive at Monaco - almost coming in at third place."
Next came Narain, the man most of the press was most excited to speak with. "Morning, everyone. I'm enjoying the role at Williams. I might not be there at the races but I have to keep testing the car through various stages of development so that its optimized for the Grand Prix weekend. That's my role basically."
Australian ace Mark Webber was the first to bring fun to the table. "Hello to everyone over there in India. I've heard a lot about your country and I definitely want to visit one day for sure. Obviously I'm a huge cricket fan as well and I've met Sachin Tendulkar a few times. Sachin is someone I look up to and, of course, friends in Australia like Steve Waugh who have great respect for him as a player and a great ambassador of the sport. I try to mirror sometimes what Sachin does [in cricket] in my racing and my professionalism, and I (laughs) haven't been as successful as he has, yet. I'm very fortunate to be racing with a team like Williams."
The young Nico Rosberg smiled as he spoke softly into the mike. "Hello to everybody in India. This if my first year in Formula One, and there have been a lot of ups and downs. The ups have been very nice, of course, and I hope we can build on those in the future, especially at the coming weekend at Silverstone. And I hope we can all meet in some years at the F1 Grand Prix in India. That would be nice."
The first question was addressed to the homegrown driver -- how does Narain feel as a test driver instead of being on the circuit? "I think it's a big step for me, to move on from Jordan to here. This is a better team, and I have a lot to learn, and I've had great success in working with Williams so far, so I think it's a very good opportunity for me."
Sir Frank reinstated that. "Well, Narain has got a little bit to learn; he's learning very fast. We've filled up both our race team slots already, and we've found Narain a place in the test team and he's very quick. He's getting a lot more consistent, and this is another step forward in his career."
But, the enthused and jingoistic journalist on my right persisted, showing off his disregard for the Formula One news reports, can Karthikeyan race for Williams next year? Sir Frank scowled. "We already have a contract with Nico and Mark is under-option, so the chances of Narain being in the team next year are not very high, but then it is by no means impossible. He has some way to go right now."
Then came words that could be construed ominous. "If any other team wanted to option Narain from us, then we would not stand in the way."
Another question to Narain, and while the young driver admitted that last year Indian interest in motorsport might have been greater because of him, the sport is still growing in India. "And thanks to sponsors like Tatagroup, it's growing day by day."
Talking about the difference between Williams and Jordan, Narain explained, "The Williams team, obviously, are technically more sound. In terms of resources, they have much better resources. I've joined the team because the performance is much better."
Then we started questioning the current drivers. Webber was looking stunning at the Monaco Grand Prix, but a last-minute engine failure snapped his chances. How is the development going?
"In F1, you have to push the cars every weekend to the absolute limit. And you try to develop a cutting-edge package. Yes, we should try and aim at finishing every race. So right now we're not very happy with our strike rate, but we're looking to improve. We're working on the development, so we could finish every single remaining race this season and have a good strike rate. Of course, we have missed some opportunities, it can happen to anyone. The preparation is crucial."
Pointing to the gentleman next to him, Webber continued, "Sir Frank, on my right, is a very steely customer, so he's made sure that we've looked at all corners of the factory and that we can lock them away problems we've had so far have been identified and steps are taken to avoid them."
Looking ahead at Silverstone, should we expect the class the car showed at Monaco? Mark grinned wistfully. "If only we has 19 races in Monte Carlo " he trailed off. "The car seemed to perform pretty well around there. But it's our job to make sure that we perform with the car even in circuits that its not best suited to. Like Barcelona and Silverstone. And we're more than aware of their characteristics, and we're trying. So whether we'll see the absolute potential we had at Monte Carlo we'll see as the weekend unfolds, but in terms of the Barcelona race - which is not dissimilar to Silverstone -- it was a relatively tougher bit for us."
Then I just had to ask. Drivers (Montoya, most significantly) have been openly debating the high-speed corners at Silverstone. The Copse and Becketts corners are presenting the greatest concern -- the speeds are insane. Are Nico and Mark worried?
Nico explained the situation. "We tested there a few weeks ago, and the problem with the V8s is that you arrive in the corners a bit slow, but that means you can carry more speed through the corners so in some examples at Silverstone, we were 30-40 kilometres quicker. Where we'd normally do a 220, we were doing a 250, and so it's very very quick, yeah! Most definitely."
And then came the mischievous grin. "You can argue about it, but I wouldn't really. I don't know, I don't really think it's too dangerous yet. But I'm a young guy so I obviously have to learn. But probably, yeah, something needs to be done in the future. The speeds are very very quick, and there's not a lot of run-off in those areas."
Webber nodded his approval. "Yeah, I agree with Nico. I think as racing drivers we love the speed. As soon as we put the helmet on we feel incredibly bulletproof, we get very strong very quickly. So we generally ignore some of the potential safety hazards. But the thing about high-speed corners like this is that they could lead to a mechanical failure, where we lose control of the car. So we can't be sure if we can wrest back the car, control it, or even go into the barrier. The run-off there is marginal for the speed we're going in now, and it is a subject that needs to be looked at much closer."
What about Sir Frank's deal with Toyota? There's a lot of speculation that Toyota might have inked a 3-year deal with Williams as engine suppliers for the British team. "My lips are sealed," Williams theatrically declared, with a slight smile. "I can't make that comment at this time."
The football World Cup is coming up. Are these folk going to follow the action? "I'm most definitely following," Nico piped up, "because it's in my home country, in Germany, and I'm going to be supporting my team a lot." Which team will each of you support, asked a thrilled journalist a few seats away. "I think its pretty straightforward which teams we're supporting. Everyone is supporting their home team," said Webber, inadvertently cutting Karthikeyan out of the picture. "Frank is very keen on England, Nico's betting on Germany. And Australia's made the cut for the first time in a long time - we aren't thinking of the victory, but we should put up an interesting challenge."
Speaking of victory, Sir Frank, what's Williams' target for the 2006 season? "We are working very hard on the development program, and should successfully catch up with the current front-runners by the time we get to the French Grand Prix. But they won't be sitting idle -- I bet Renault will also get a lot faster by then. But we should have closed the gap considerably." Williams is clear that the team will challenge for more than it is getting right now. "We'd like to finish in front of at least Toyota and Honda. And McLaren aren't as quick as they were. We have to be realistic, but it would be good to challenge McLaren as the season goes on."
Nico Rosberg is a find. One of the most phenomenal debuts in ages, the young racer is showing his class consistently through his first season. I congratulated Keke's 20-year-old son and asked for his highlights from the season thus far. "Thanks," Rosberg grinned, a disarmingly open fellow not (yet) given to affectations. "The highlights have obviously been the few races that have gone very well for me. There have been some races that have gone the other way but I guess that's the way it is, and I'm just starting out. The big highlights will have to be Bahrain, where I finished seventh, and Nurburgring, also finishing seventh. That was great but I know I need to keep focus and look ahead at the season, and from this point we need to consistently aim at as many results as possible."
And which has been the hardest circuit for him so far? Nico scratched his chin and thought, for a bit. "The hardest circuit for me was Imola. It's difficult to say why exactly, but it's probably because it's a very bumpy track and goes the other way around. So that was tricky. But since then and before then, the races have been pretty good for me, and I'm quite happy about that."
The session was coming to an end, but they had time for one last question. Their queries about FIFA 2008 answered, most scribes looked tentative. Having taken up most of the board's time, I hesitated as well but finally realised I had to ask this question.
"For all of you: what do you take from Schumacher's qualifying 'incident'? What, in particular, is to be raised at the GPDA meeting?" The panel turned back, alert. Nico, whose World champion father was one of those most openly critical of Michael Schumacher's mishap at the Monte Carlo qualifying, was the first to chime in. "It's going to be quite an interesting meeting, we're all very interested in what he has to say. And as president (of the Grand Prix Drivers Association), he has to explain what happened that afternoon." Narain and Webber agreed, dittoing their interest in the meeting.
What was the drivers' gut feeling? Webber took a deep breath. "The incident, for me, was really really really clear. That Michael obviously wanted to stop on the circuit and that's the decision he made. I think part of him was struggling to do it, to actually go through with doing what he did, and the other part of him wanted to do it, which is why in the end he made such a bad job of it. He didn't do either: he didn't damage the car and he didn't do a good job of it."
Laughingly, Nico had the last word. "Should've at least taken one tyre off!"
