DE LA ROSA WORKING ON MAGIC LESSON FROM LAUDA

[ 5/25/2002 ]

BY TEAM FORD RACING CORRESPONDENT

Monaco — Okay, here’s the deal: Drive really fast and those steel guardrails and concrete walls that line the narrow and twisting Monaco street circuit will disappear! That’s more or less the advice that Jaguar Racing director Niki Lauda gave Pedro de la Rosa before practice got underway for the 60th running of the Monaco Grand Prix.

It’s been a frustrating long weekend for the Jaguar team as de la Rosa and Eddie Irvine qualified 20th an 21st respectively. But de la Rosa wasn’t too downbeat when he sat down with Team Ford Racing after qualifying for this exclusive interview.

Question: Are you going to start hating this place? You have some bad memories of Monaco from your previous years and crashes here, and now you qualified way down the grid.

Pedro de la Rosa: “No, actually so far this year it has been better because I started badly with a shunt on the first laps (lap 7 on the first day of practice), and since then I have managed to calm down a little bit and not push too hard too early. Slowly I’ve improved the car and improved myself. Okay, I am 20th on the grid, but we did a good job to get below the 1 minute 20 second barrier. So that has actually been quite a good qualifying.”

Q. There are eight Michelin cars in the top 10, so they have a good tire here. Do the Michelins suit the Jaguar Cosworths?

PDR: “It’s a good tire. It’s working well for us also. If you look at the times, the fact that we are just about two-tenths behind the (Bridgestone-shod) BAR and Sauber, it proves that we have closed the gap a lot. That means that the tire is better because the car is the same.”

Q. What sort of sensation is it to drive around Monaco?

PDR: “Here is it is a constant thrill! The adrenalin is so much different from any other track. You can’t have the smallest mistake. Every corner is critical and it’s very easy to mess it up and destroy the car. The adrenalin is pumping through your blood from minute one, even before you get in the car.”

Q. Niki Lauda didn’t qualify here in 1983 in the McLaren. It was the only time in 172 Grand Prix races that he failed to qualify.

PDR: “Yeah, he told me about that. That’s the good thing about Niki — he understands how critical a car can be in Monaco. People thought that the car here is not that important.”

Q. Lauda went through highs and lows in his driving career. What sort of advice does he give you?

PDR: “Niki is very good because he understands what we do and what we say and what we complain about. It is a good experience to work with Niki. It’s fantastic how he explains what he did to overcome situations like we are in now.

“He told me before coming here that the best way of attacking Monaco is that you go out and go flat out from lap one, and you suddenly see the whole weekend differently because you forget about the barriers. I thought that was a good approach. So I went out, pushed like crazy and crashed! And he said, ‘Yeah, but I forgot to say that you are only allowed to crash when you are going really quick!’”

Q. Finally, a grueling 78-lap race on Sunday. How do you approach a race starting from the back of the grid?

PDR: “It is very simple. Don’t do anything stupid. Try to let the race come to you. We are not in the position to attack or try innovative strategies. Just try to keep it away from the barriers and try to make it to the finish.”