Following the accident we had to split the team pretty much into two. There were Ernesto’s people to see how he was – his father and manager were there so they could take care of him – and the boys obviously had a lot of work to do. We calculated immediately after the race how long it would take to rebuild the car; we found out there would be no way we would have it finished if we didn’t paint it straightaway on Saturday night to be able to start building it on the Sunday morning, so half the team was out finding a paint shop and spent the night actually painting Ernesto’s car. It was ready about 11am the next day to start re-building, otherwise there was no way we’d have been ready in time for
Silverstone. It really was a race against the clock.
In the meantime we had to get back to the race as well, because we had Javi who had to come through the field. He drove a fabulous race to get up to seventh despite being so badly held up in the pit-lane; Javi lost seven positions there which was very upsetting. It was funny actually to see the difference between Magny-Cours’ pit-lane where you literally have one or two metres between cars, and then you go to Silverstone which was fabulous. Each team could put both their cars in the pit-lane and still be able to work. It was such a contrast.
Anyway, Javi’s performance on Saturday set the tone for Sunday, when he started from second place and Nicolas Lapierre had his braking problem, although Javi said he was just waiting for the right moment to pass him. I think we would have won either way; he said he had an absolutely fantastic car with quite a bit of leeway to be able to push harder, and we saw that after Lapierre went off at Adelaide. Even with Luca Filippi and Giorgio Pantano behind him, he was always able to have enough of a margin when he needed it. When the rain started he slowed down, but when they caught him up he just took off again. Even on the radio he seemed pretty relaxed.
