Q. Do you and everyone on the team feel personally the results on the track?

A. Absolutely. There are not many jobs in the world where everyone can see, where you have millions of people watching what you do. I have a Twitter account, and on there, you get all the good things and all the bad things from people. You get such a range of emotions from people that follow you, follow your team, follow your drivers. And they give it to you, they don’t hold back. And you know that every Sunday you go out there, and you’ve got people on both sides of this fence that are going to praise you or are going to slag you. All on the job you do. You are judged every two weeks. And you can go from hero to zero just like that.

Q. You love the competition?

A. Absolutely. Yes. I always love winning. I always love being better than everyone else. I mean the good thing is that we are not a big budget team. We are not a real big hitter. But we have always been the underdog that comes good. And I really like the underdog feeling of the team. It’s a great thing. And all the way through, whenever we have won a world championship it’s always, like, what’s this team winning? And there’s obviously something there, because we happen to be very good at what we do.

Q. How much is people management part of this job?

A. It’s a very big part. And one of the things that I have learned is that if you feel looked after then you’re going to want to work harder for the team. This team has been really good to me. Absolutely, through all the years I have worked here it has always looked after me. So you definitely feel a bond with the team. And I try to instill that in the people who work for me now — about the history of the team, about how much it has done — and I always try to look after them, on and off the track.

Q. Instilling team spirit is key to the job?

A. Yes, part of my job is to get the right personnel in the right places. What I don’t like is egos; I don’t like people to think they are bigger than the team; I don’t like people that are constantly demanding. I just like people to gel. If there is a problem, we’ll work it out as a team. If there are good times, then we’ll celebrate it as a team. It’s all part of the balance of keeping a good team spirit. And I think that people when they come to Lotus, or even come to visit Lotus, I think they get the feeling that we are a strong team, a friendly team. That we don’t have egos we are just hard working and want to do our job.

Q. It is unique: The team has been based in Enstone for decades, it has had different names and entities, but it has always been the same team.

A. Yes, and that’s why the car is now called an E20 or an E21: E for Enstone. We don’t have a B for Benetton or an R for Renault. We have an E for Enstone. And sometimes people don’t realize that it is the Enstone-based team that has done all of this all the way through. On Tuesday I’m doing a speech to new starters at the factory. And because the people coming in now are younger, they don’t realize that we started as Toleman and our first F1 race was in 1984. And we’ve had people like Senna driving for us, and Schumacher and Alonso, all these great drivers in great races. So I try to instill that you’re actually buying into a bit of history here.

Q. Where to from team manager?

A. Sporting director. I like sporting regulations, I like to get involved. I think I’m fairly normal, so it would be nice, everything needs a bit of normality.