Brands was a difficult pill to swallow but it took me to another level in my career because what you have to realise is to be happy within yourself and what you are achieving. I had a great start to the season and had carried a lot of weight, the conditions weren’t favourable to us and I aquaplaned straight off at the first corner. In hindsight, it wasn’t so much a driver error but a tyre pressure problem so I had to take it on the chin, but these things are character building and make you stronger.
Q:
Something you mentioned a few times is the issue of weight. It was a bone of contention during the season with 80 kilos being the most you could carry. How difficult did it make things?
Andy Priaulx:
For a two litre car with a narrow tyre, it was too much weight and what you had to do was be good on your bad days. There were days when the car was only capable of being tenth or twelfth on the grid and if you qualified in eighth, you had done an ultra qualifying lap. There were times when I needed to be able to understand that the car was only good enough for that and I had to deal with that, as did the other drivers.
What was happening in the end was the big boys fighting for the championship were racing down in 17th or 18th place because they had weight on board and the
FIA realised that that isn’t how it should be. Hopefully this year, with a little bit less weight onboard and a maximum of 60 kilos, we might see more racing at the front.
Q:
One more thing to wrap up 2006, you do run as a single car team with RBM. Outsiders might look at it as
BMW running five cars but those five cars are split between the three teams. As a lone driver in a single car team, how difficult was it going through the season with a new car, given you had to develop it on your own and didn’t have a team-mate to bounce ideas off?
Andy Priaulx:
It was very tough and I’m pleased you brought that up because I am a single car team. The way BMW want this championship to run is they want the teams to race against each other to raise the levels of the teams and drivers and it means that everyone is very protective over their data and information so it was very tough. Schnitzer are the factory development team and do the mileage in the car so that is why I believe that what we did in winning the first race was very special and why it meant a lot to me.
