2007 May

Despite issuing team orders in Sunday’s Monaco Grand Prix, McLaren team boss Ron Dennis insists that the Woking based squad is not favouring Fernando Alonso over Lewis Hamilton and that both their drivers are free to race each other for the 2007 world championship driver’s crown.

“We will never favour one driver over another; we never have. Lewis has an equal opportunity to win the world championship,” Dennis said on the BBC. “I have been monstrously criticised in the past for not favouring a driver and frittering away the opportunity of a world title. But we will never favour one driver over another, no matter who it is. We never have and we never will.”

However, that said, Dennis admitted that they were forced to tell their two drives to hold station in order to guarantee the best possible finish around the perilous streets of Monte Carlo. In doing so, they secured the best possible finish with Alonso first and Hamilton second.
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The world of Formula One, until recently, generally perceived as a man’s world, a place exclusively reserved for men where mechanics and engineers come together along with the drivers - strictly XY chromosomes! So does this mean that the F1 gene is only carried by the Y chromosome? Not at all! For a few years F1 has been slowly turning the page and while we are still far from being equal in numbers, women are slowly making their mark on the F1 world.

At Panasonic Toyota Racing, women actually play a key role and they are an essential link in connection with the success the team, including Public Relations officer, Fernanda Villas-Bôas. Fernanda and her team must make sure that the media are satisfied, and that includes organizing interviews and photoshoots, and when the camera’s are rolling, her team is never very far away. Constantly answering requests from the media, while unceasingly seeking out new ideas to increase the team’s interest in the media are all part of her job description.

Fernanda agreed to let us interview her this time, rather than set up an interview with someone else and on a flight between Paris and Cologne, she took the time to answer our questions and allow us to better understand her role within Panasonic Toyota Racing.
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BMW Sauber F1 driver Robert Kubica, took part in the first official FIA press conference ahead of the upcoming Monaco Grand Prix, round five of the 2007 Formula One season, and he revealed that he is feeling more than confident ahead of his first race here behind the wheel of an F1 contender….

Robert Kubica, fourth for the team in Spain yet again, but I’m sure you were happy with it.
Well, of course I was happy, not only because of the fourth place but because this was the first race this season without any problem, that the car was working 100 percent, and that we hadn’t made any mistake in qualifying. Everybody has worked well, so the results come. The results should have already come in the first race in Australia, but I hope that Barcelona was not our first race without problems and not the last one this season.
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