By Phil Huff
March 21 2003

The Friday press conference at Malaysia saw David Richards attending, and there was no doubt questions would centre around the very public feud between Jacques Villeneuve and Jenson Button. BAR Honda top man Richards took on all comers... Q: David, one of the thing that is pre-occupying everyone is the spat between your two drivers. Apparently a Sunday paper was told that it was all about Jacques' earpiece falling out. Is that the case?
David Richards: Well, one of the ear-pieces wasn't working. It wasn't working.

Q: So the other one worked for the rest of the race?
DR: Yes, but one of these cars, if you try hearing on the radio... just even today we've got a discrepancy between the two cars: Jenson's radio is very good and Jacques still has problems with it. These things do happen. I'm sure every team has problems with radios at some point in time and Jacques certainly is very sensitive on the hearing side, turning it down on the volume so no, that's what happened.

Q: How long can this spat go on? When does it become damaging?
DR: Well, you know you have to accept that inside teams the biggest rival is going to be your teammate and they both now see that they have a competitive car, they can both prove themselves, they've got a lot at stake and clearly they are both highly competitive, so these odd little eruptions are going to happen. Behind the scenes of course, the engineers still co-operate, the team still functions very well and so it's not an issue.

Q: Not even when Jacques criticises the marketing and PR department?
DR: No, I'm sure they are thick-skinned enough to take that sort of criticism.

Q: So you're not worried about it?
DR: Not in the slightest.

Q: How did you feel about the new rules?
DR: I think we've got to give them a little bit of time to really let things settle down. Clearly when you introduce anything new there's a bit of scepticism and you have to wait. The initial reactions are often not the reactions you come to or the conclusions you come to after a few races. So I think the timing is right to review things after Brazil and see if there's anything needs to be looked at then.

Q: Anything particular at this stage?
DR: No, no. I'm very open-minded about it. I think, as Ove said, something had to be done. I think we don't always all agree with the same ideas but nonetheless some positive things have come out of it and let's just leave it for a couple more races and see how things get on.

Q: David Going back to the feud. Are you happy to for it to ride its course in a free manner?
DR: I very much have the opinion the drivers should be individuals and characters in their own right. I don't believe in gagging them for some sort of corporate speak. I let them get on with things. Unless of course it goes one step too far and starts to damage the team at all. But at this moment in time it'll run its course and I think you that guys, I'm sure, will keep stirring up it up so that's how it is.

Q: You haven't banged their heads together yet?
DR: Oh we'll have chats over this weekend I'm sure about it but you can't.. these things have to be allowed to sort themselves out. You can't resolve things for people. You just have to facilitate it and try and help it go along and that's that. Flavio and I were just talking just now and he was asking my opinion on the testing you were talking about a while earlier, and I share his opinion that, very much, so that if we could all get together, all the teams, and control our testing for next year possibly, so we have restrictive testing, maybe on Thursday, Friday. The reason we didn't do it is because.. I would have happily - if we'd all voted to do the same thing - I'd have voted for it completely. But I think if we could all do something like that it would be far more sensible for the sport and for all of us.

Q: Don't we all know that there are three people who would never vote for that?
DR: Well you live changes and we all have financial pressures on us and things do change so I wouldn't regard that as being always the case.

Q: On the radio side, about Jacques' radio, are you going to be using a bigger pit board or something?
DR: We're going to turn the volume up on the radio and just shout down it!

Q: What? Bigger radios?
DR: Yeah! Like the old... one with valves in it! Like Grundig radios. Yeah. We're working on it. We're working on it.
Flavio Briatore: I tell you I had the same problem with Jean Alesi once driving. I don't know if some of you remember? He missed the refuelling. And the excuse was the radio's not working.
DR: Come in! Come in! (laughter)
FB: It happens to everybody, though.

Q: You've only got suggest a heavier radio and I'm sure all of a sudden their hearing will pick up.
DR: Exactly.
FB: Or cut their salary. It's the same (laughter all round).

Q: To all five of you. McLaren and Williams are going to arbitration with the FIA. Where do you stand on that? Will you support the two teams or what?
Ove Anderson: I feel our position in Formula One is not so strong that we can't really take any kind of position.
Peter Sauber: My English is not good enough to give you an answer to this political question!
DR: I respect Frank and Ron's views as very sincere in the way they put this forward. I don't share them. But they're doing it for their own valid reasons but I just feel it was unnecessary to bring it out into the public domain a week or ten days before the start of the season when everything was looking so positive and there was such a positive momentum behind the championship at that time.
FB: I think Formula One needs to talk about sport and not arbitration. It's not nice, it's not good, it doesn't bring anything good to us. We have so many controversial issues and we need to talk about these and you need to make sure that people who are watching the races are enjoying watching the races, make sure that sport is coming back into Formula One, make sure we have stability. I think this is what we should be looking at for the future. The rest is not interesting.
John Hogan: At the end of the day it's a sport and, as exactly as Flavio said, arbitration has nothing to do with sport. I respect them for what they are trying to do but it isn't smart.