Good morning and welcome to Sepang, Malaysia for the Team Representatives’ Thursday press conference ahead of this weekend’s Malaysian V-Prix – round three of the 2022 Formula Virtual World Championship. Joining us today, from left to right, are; Arthur Lapierre of Coca-Cola Porsche Team Mathershaw, the empty seat of Lucas Wilson as, unfortunately, he can’t join us today, Bradley Downton from Downton FV Team, Adam Blocker of FIRST Motorsport, and Nick Forrest from North Star Racing. Welcome gentlemen. Scott Parkin – FVTV: We’ll start off today with the winners from last weekend – and indeed the only winners so far this season. Bradley, Klaas drove a fantastic race in Adelaide and picked up the Star of the Weekend award, as well as many comments on how mature and composed he seemed. Do you agree with people suggesting he’s taken it to a new level this season? Bradley Downton: Klaas has certainly approached this season in a different way. He's been undertaking a new training regime and is just giving off a slightly different aura in the garage, it's really drawing the team together. In terms of how he's driving though, I don't think there's much difference. Australia was certainly a very mature drive, but I don't think that's anything we haven't seen before. Absolutely, we've seen moments when he hasn't been so calm and collected, but those were largely earlier in his career. SP – FVTV: That’s true, he certainly looks in fine form though. Arthur, your pace last weekend looked fantastic and you locked out the front row of the grid, but unfortunately fell back in the race. Did Adrien have some sort of issue on the car causing him to lose time? Arthur Lapierre: I think our pace looks very good over one lap, but we’re yet to unlock the full potential over a race stint. Both the race team and the factory is working very hard to make sure this is solved in short order, but time will tell. Scott Parkin – FVTV: Ah that explains that a little then. Coming to you now, Nick. After Johan failing to qualify in Japan and Brock retiring, you seemed to bounce back in Adelaide despite some bad luck. Are you happier with your starting point this season than where you were a year ago? Nick Forrest: To some degree, yes. It doesn't seem that long ago, admittedly, that we were fighting at the sharp end of the midfield and battling for the odd podium, so that's ultimately where we'd want to get back up to, but first of all we really needed to analyse where we went wrong with the 2021 car, and get as strong of an understanding as we could on the new regulations. The NS-07 might not have as much pace as some of our past cars, but it's definitely given us a lot of good data already to take back to the factory and put toward our research for next season. Scott Parkin – FVTV: Data is certainly always handy, to say the least! Adam, it’s been a difficult start to the season after such a great few years up at the front for FIRST. Have you been expecting a downturn in results or has this season come as a complete shock to everyone? Adam Blocker: The lack of pace that we had in testing was a shock to us at first. We were expecting to be in the top five teams again this season. The engineers and key people on the team have done a lot of analysis to figure out what happened and we have a direction. We've identified some things that we can fix with in season upgrades, but it's hard to say how far up the grid those will get us. SP – FVTV: Of course, time will tell! Okay, the Team Representatives will now take questions from the media. Rebecca Parnell – XtremeV: Adam, after that horrible fire last weekend, Klien sustained small burns to his hands - first of all I think I speak for everyone when I say we're glad he's alright - but was the fire that sudden or did something prevent him from getting out of the cockpit as quickly as usual? AB: The fire was just massive - hot and in terms of size - and really sudden. He got out of the car reasonably quickly as you saw but it still took some time to come to a stop and do the egress procedure. Overall it's a tribute to the safety procedures that the FVA put in place that he was able to egress quickly and also credit to the marshals for getting to the scene and putting the fire out while some things on the car were still salvageable. Theo Parker – VM Magazine: Arthur; both your team and Lucas missed the deadline to notify the FVA of your strategy for the race and subsequently will start from the back of the grid. In this epic battle developing at the front of the field, how costly could this be for your entire season? AL: Sometimes life gets in the way - we need to consider how to make sure this never happens again, it’s as simple as that. I can’t comment on how costly it’ll be, but obviously it won’t be helpful. Kurt West – FOX: We all know that Brock has the speed to be up front winning races. So Nick, when will North Star be able to give him a car capable of that? NF: He certainly is a very talented racer, you're right about that, we wouldn't have kept him on otherwise. As I mentioned in our last question, though, 2021 was a disaster for us, and we took such a huge financial hit from that, close to a third of our entire budget. It's obviously going to take some time to build back up to where we were, but I've every belief that Johan and Brock are capable of bringing the team forward once again. Matt Stevenson – WTFV: Bradley, you’ve won the first two races of the season and already have a healthy gap developing to the chasing pack. How soon in the season will you tell Matteo to act as Klaas’ rear gunner? BD: When it is mathematically impossible for Matteo to win the title and Klaas is still in with a shout, or likewise if the inverse is true. But until then - as has always and will continue to be the policy within our team - both drivers are absolutely free to race, but they know the rules. If they're silly about it and collide, we have no problem making difficult decisions. Peter Duggan – FutureFV.com: My question is to all four of you. Last weekend we saw the first VWRS and VOARS races of the season with VERS and VARS beginning next weekend. Do your teams already have eyes on future drivers, either in VWRS for the near future, or in the third tier for the distant future? AL: I’m very keen of course on following the progress of Timo in the junior ranks, but of course I have a soft spot for my cars in the series too! We’re always looking for talent, and this year is no exception. AB: We're always keeping an eye on the junior series and looking for prospects. We haven't operated a junior academy in a couple seasons but we'd definitely get back into it if we see the right opportunity. We've had some success with our junior academy in the past, with Felix and Oleksandr Zozulya both having reasonable success in FV, and we'll see how Stefan gets on this season to add to that. In terms of specific drivers, we'll have to see how a few more rounds of the current seasons play out. NF: We do, I think you have to be cognizant of the talented young drivers making their way through the ranks, because they're going to be the ones fighting for victories and championships one day, hopefully. We've had Klaas, Kangur, Zetticci, Alvarez, Xylander, a lot of very strong drivers entering the sport over the years and taking it to the established guys at the front of the field. North Star have our Protostars academy, of course, and while it was a bit disappointing to see Ryo [Matsuoka] retiring twice from good grid positions last weekend, we're very eager to see how he and Carl [Sandholm] perform over the rest of their respective seasons. BD: I think our junior talent is well known. We have Spencer in VWRS this season, while Sergio also joins the ranks. Of course we're always keeping an eye out for other talent we could bring on board and try and nurture however, but none of that means we're planning on replacing our current drivers before any of you guys get an idea for a headline. We're perfectly happy with our line-up, but it would be silly to ignore potential emerging talent. SP – FVTV: Excellent, some great questions and answers there. We’ll move onto the Fan Questions now, the first one here is for you, Bradley. “With two wins on the bounce to kick off the season and your main championship rivals being excluded from qualifying, surely you've got to feel good about the start to the season. Does it make it easier to get into your groove each race when you've got something of a buffer to your competition?” BD: We've had a solid start to the season, definitely, but we can't afford to get complacent. It would be easy to turn up here going 'realistically our two biggest rivals won't feature towards the front of the grid, so we can cruise to an easy win', but that absolutely isn't the case. We've seen already the likes of Ingram and Phoenix aren't too far back, and there are so many other things potentially in the mix, especially here in Malaysia. Reliability for example, or the weather, there's so much to think about aside from just 'who are we racing', so we can't afford to rest on our laurels. The Championship situation doesn't really come into it when preparing for a race. We approach each race as an event we want to win, and do our upmost to achieve that - regardless of our competition. SP – FVTV: The next one is for you, Nick. “Despite some hard luck, your car has shown to be no slouch this season. Has the focus on improving your performance from last season come at the cost of some reliability?” NF: I think it'd be disingenuous to say that it hadn't. We built the NS-07 with a completely different design philosophy to the previous year's car, and that obviously affects things like aerodynamics, packaging, cooling and the like. The pace is definitely a step up from last season, so we've gone in the right direction on that front, however the tolerances within the car aren't quite where we had expected them, so this is hopefully something we'll be able to work around and resolve in the upcoming races. SP – FVTV: It sounds like it’s been a huge task, it’s great to see the team moving in the right direction! The next one here is for you, Adam. “You were unlucky in Australia, despite the car seeming like it had improved. Are you already getting to the bottom of what's been troubling your car this season?” AB: Like I said in the opening question, I think we will be able to make some solid improvements with upgrades to the car throughout the season. We have some direction on what our problem is, the hard part is coming up with a solution mid-season and executing it quickly. SP – FVTV: That’s the difficult bit, isn’t it! Okay final Fan Question now, for you Arthur. “There’s rumours in the paddock that Porsche will be making some sort of announcement soon. Can you comment on this?” AL: I cannot I am afraid. When someone has something to say, you’ll all be the first to know. SP – FVTV: Thanks Adrien. Okay, final question now before we finish, to all of you. With the forecast showing a strong possibility of the weekend being wet, how will this affect your preparations? In terms of strategy and how you manage the race? AL: Wet would be nice - our strategy is already compromised as we’ve alluded to previously, so we need any chance we can get! AB: With our current pace, it means that there could be some bigger opportunities than normal for a result. If we get a wet race, we'll be more likely to take some chances because we have less to lose than other teams. But ultimately in a wet race the priority is to be on the right tire for the current track condition, not what might happen in five minutes. NF: Well I don't think North Star have ever had the best of luck with rain, especially in Malaysia! If we think back to 2018, we only had about seven cars actually make the flag, plus there was Johan's horrific crash that took him out of action for the next two races. I'd hope that the new formula makes conditions like that at least a bit more manageable, changing weather always throws things up in the air strategy-wise. It does, however, open up a door for some of the teams in the midfield to grab a big result they otherwise wouldn't have the chance to, depending on when the rain comes and goes, and hopefully North Star can be the team to do that this weekend. BD: It's something to take into consideration when making our strategy calls, definitely. If rain arrives some way into the race, then the slick tyre compound drivers are on could be the deciding factor, likewise the decision on when to pit for wets, or vice versa to slicks if we have a drying track. The difference between the right and wrong call could make or break a race. Unfortunately however, forecasts here are always a little up in the air, so it's tricky for sure - but our strategists and weather team do a fantastic collaborative job, and we've every confidence in them making the right calls should the situation arise. SP – FVTV: That’s fantastic, great answers there as always gents. That’s all from the Team Representatives’ Press Conference today, make sure you join us tomorrow for Practice ahead of the Malaysian V-Prix!
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