Transcript of interview with Prodrive MD Nick Fry
14/8/2004 15:02 (Press Release) -
The following is a transcript of the media conference held by Prodrive Group Managing Director Nick Fry at Winton Raceway on Saturday July 24, 2004.
Good afternoon everybody, my name is Nick Fry, I am the Managing Director of Prodrive and I have the responsibility for all of our racing activities and the road car side of our business as well, which of course includes Ford Performance Vehicles (FPV) and Ford Performance Racing (FPR).
I will firstly cover a few issues which may cover some of the points which are of interest and then welcome your questions.
I had the choice of Hockenheim in the sun this weekend or Winton, and for some reason I chose Winton! All jokes aside - I am pleased to be here. I guess this is a sign of how seriously we are taking this.
Last year started very well for FPR – our first year in V8 Supercars with one win and three podium positions. This year clearly has not gone anywhere near as well as we would have liked or expected with just one podium position gained thus far.
I think we always said right from the start when we got into this that we didn’t expect it to be easy, and with all of our motorsport programs we generally say it’s a three year program before you really make a successful team. I think it is very much turning out that way. Having said that, this year has been a disappointment and at the moment we appear to be progressing less quickly than we would like. This is the reason why I am down here, to try and help the team identify what we should be doing to make the team more successful.
We have clearly identified a few things that we need to do and some of these I think you will be aware of. One of them is very clear, we need a more experienced team manager and we have been looking around for that person for some time. We hope to make an announcement very shortly as we have identified the person we think can do the job and hopefully that will come to fruition within the next few weeks with the person down here quite shortly. I am comfortable that we will be able to fill this position soon.
On the engine side, I think most of you know that we have had four people from the UK here for some time now and they are going to continue to develop the engines. I am 100% confident that they can do the job. This is the team of people that designed the Ford Mondeo British Touring Car first, second and third Championship winning engine and they also work on our Ferrari Sportscar engines. They are very good at what they do. It has been a little bit more difficult than we expected and we have had some false starts, but we are continuing with the development and there are more developments coming for the engine between now and the end of the season. We will continue to work on
that.
The other thing that I am doing here is working out what other engineering support we need to give to John Russell (FPR Chief Engineer). Clearly one person cannot do the whole job and there are a couple of other areas we have identified where we are bringing in some reinforcements and again, I think this can have a fairly quick effect.
The last thing we are doing here is on the driver side of things, some of you may have seen our good friend Alain Menu here recently. Alain has been a good friend of the Prodrive family for some years now and he will be joining us for the endurance races. Partnering him will be Adam Macrow who joins us once again this year. We will also pair Craig Lowndes and Glenn Seton together again for Sandown and Bathurst, which we think will work very well. The objective is clear for Bathurst - to go one better than we did last year.
The bottom line is that we are totally committed to making this work. Clearly David Richards, my boss, with some help from myself and others, have been fairly successful in other Formulae. As I said earlier, V8 Supercars has proven quite difficult, but we are committed to making it successful and winning is the only acceptable solution and we intend to get there.
It is going to take some time – nice fairy stories only happen in children’s books, they don’t generally happen in reality, so we have to work hard at it.
Committed we are and we will make it work. On that note, I am happy to answer any questions you may like to ask.
Q: Is the team manager you are appointing being sourced locally or internationally?
A: We have looked globally, at the moment it is probably appropriate that I don’t say where the person is coming from as I am not sure that this person has informed the current employers.
Q: Does this person have V8 Supercar experience?
A: I’m not answering that question I’m afraid.
Comment: You did say that the person was coming ‘down’ here , so quite clearly it is not a local person.
A: (Laughter) Read into it whatever you like.
Q: When do you hope to have this person on the ground?
A: I hope to have the new team manager on the ground before Sandown.
Q: Do you expect to have the same two drivers driving with FPR in next year’s Championship?
A: Drivers are not our problem as we have two very capable drivers. It is a bit too early to say at this stage – but our intent at the moment is to keep what we have got and clearly we have got to a better job to convince them that they want to drive for us and that is what we intend to do.
Q: Have you spoken to Craig about his decision?
A: Yes I have spoken to Craig a lot despite only having arrived yesterday morning. We have spoken several times and we will speak some more. It is my intention to find out what the drivers would like us to do and then do it, as this is a good way forward. A few years back I had a similar sort of conversation with Richard Burns the Rally driver when we weren’t doing so well.
We decided what to do and then we went and did it and we made him World Champion. So listening to people and then responding, especially when you have drivers of such experience, seems like a good way forward.
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