latest article featuring Arai interview
http://sportiva.shueisha.co.jp/clm/moto ... 12/f1_105/
not sure when it took place, could be joint interview with nikkei or some other japanese sourced articles that appeared while ago but seems sometimes in January/February or within couple weeks anyway
on 2015
In the first races, we encountered reliability and heat issues, so we had to confine the performance of ERS system itself quite a lot. Appearance from outside didn't change at all but we did/changed many things about internals, and we managed to settle everything for once at Spanish GP.
Of course we were beaten on the output but lack of deployment was bigger issue. When we realized it in the 1st half of the season, we were still in a stage where we were wondering about how to fix/solve it technically. We even suspected that the concept itself was flawed. Since then research and development had started at Sakura and we could get certain sense of assurance about solution, but by then it was already too late, the season would have been over by the time development completed, so we had to race in the situation that we cannot overcome lack of deployment even if we want to.
So at first a piece called ERS was completely useless, and a piece called ICE power was still imperfect. A piece called reliability has always been lacking, also a big piece called deployment was broken, or rather more like the shape of the piece at hand was totally mismatched/irrelevant to the whole picture we had in our mind. Shape of the piece is different so that it just cannot fit/match there, sort of.
on 2016 PU development
Breaking down into elements and arranging them in the order of maturity and thinking about where to concentrate/prioritize to develop 2016 PU. Right now we are working on the rest of the pieces (of jigsaw puzzle) but still in the middle of guessing the right shape. That's where the gist of the matter is. You have to actually run it on track in order to verify/confirm it. So we're going to verify it in the Barcelona testings.
There are still issues to solve, and performance is still lacking quite a bit. We know where Merc is, it's like "well, they are so far ahead...". We closed in gradually throughout 2015 but still very far. They will advance even further in 2016. It would be nice if we could get there by leaping up suddenly, but things aren't easy.
Our fans might expect something cheery like podium etc but at the moment team as a whole isn't thinking about that yet. Right now we'd like to obtain performance as package such that we can reach Q3. The first step is to make fans feel secured/relaxed about watching races, like thinking "battle started, how it's gonna be?". In order for that, we have to be on top10 grid by going through to Q3.
We have to be able to mix with and race squarely against teams like RBR and FI etc (as in 2015 pecking order) otherwise we cannot score points in the first place nor reach such results that our fans would expect.
As a desire, we'd like to get there from the opening race. But this year we have only 2 pre-season testings, and the situation is that we are going to make final preparation work from now. If we can reach certain level of maturity until the start of European round, we will be able to settle the direction of the car settings, and make stable races throughout the season. In order for that, how we will do at those first round of races will be extremely important.
This year, I wish to be able to share with our fans a rough sketch of the picture drawn on the white jigsaw puzzle canvas. It might take some more time until we are able to draw/finish the proper picture. But the prospect should be clearer if we can make proper fight in the first rounds before the European series by going through Q3 and fighting within top10 constantly.
