INDIA in F1

Tag: FIA Press Conference

  • Its a very special day: Rosberg

    DRIVERS

    1 – Nico ROSBERG (Mercedes)
    2 – Mark WEBBER (Red Bull Racing)
    3 – Fernando ALONSO (Ferrari)

    PODIUM INTERVIEW  (Conducted by Damon Hill)

    Q: Nico, you’ve kept your cool when all around you were losing theirs. There were tyres going off, there were cars breaking down. Tell me, how do you feel to have won the British Grand Prix?

    Nico ROSBERG: Fantastic! It’s a very, very special day and I think what makes it more special is that our factory is so close, and our team has done such a fantastic job to come through during the season. We have such momentum going at the moment, progressing all the time. Really, really massively quick in qualifying, also getting faster and faster in the race. I think today we had equally the fastest race car as well. So, it’s a very special day for me. And this goes out… this is for all of my team colleagues working in the factory. I hope many of them have been in the grandstands watching. This one is for all of you out there. Thank you very much.

    Q: It was a dramatic race. You had two guys in the front who you had to beat. We lost Lewis Hamilton early in the race, that was a big disappointment to the British fans and then you were charging, you were chasing after Sebastian and then the leader of the World Championship, his car failed right here. What did you feel when that happened?

    NR: With Lewis, definitely I feel sorry for all the British fans. It would have been a great race for Lewis here in front of his home crowd – that’s always a massive disappointment, but that’s racing sometimes. When Sebastian stopped, to be honest, I won’t lie, I wasn’t disappointed by that one. And then from then it was a great race to win.

    Q: Mark, what a storming drive. You must have thought it was all over, the start didn’t go so well, tell us about it.

    Mark WEBBER: I didn’t have a clue what happened off the line. We’ve had two or three good starts in the last few races and then the lights went out and we’re back to our normal tactics. So, I’m not sure. We need to have a look at why they pop up every now and again. That was frustrating. Then I had, I think it was Grosjean, take the front wing in the first corner, so the first stint was compromised by that. The boys did a great job to put a fresh front wing on at the stop and then we started to get the race underway from there. Obviously there was a lot of people with issues with the tyres which helped a bit but we were lucky not to have any issues. It was a clean race, good strategy. I think that, yeah I would have liked a few more laps at Nico but he deserved the win. He was quick all day, obviously. Little bit of fortune but anyway you’ve got to be there to capitalise. I’m very happy with second, team have done a good job and thanks – last time here in Formula One in front of the British fans – thank you very much.

    Fernando, you again drove a storming race. You really got caught out by the second safety car – you were down and had to charge back up through the field. Fantastic drive back into the podium.

    Fernando ALONSO: Yeah, it was a good race for us. With the last safety car we lost six positions because of the safety car. But overall I think it has been a very lucky race for us. Looking at the problems with the tyres of some of the drivers, we fact we didn’t any problem we have to consider lucky. And then with Sebastian’s problem, as Nico touched on before, we’ve been also lucky to recover some points. At the end it was a very good Sunday and hopefully we put on a good show for the great, great fans. They’ve been here from Thursday to today, supporting all the teams, respecting all the teams. Thank you very much.

    Q: The championship, is it blown open now? Here you have a points gain on Sebastian.

    FA: Mixed feelings to be honest. Happy for the points, we’ve reduced the gap a little bit in this race but the pace we saw this weekend is not good enough. There were some other Sundays that we lost some points and maybe I was more optimistic. Today we recovered some points but we know there is a lot of work to do. But I trust the team, we are united, we have a difficult weekend, we put the cross and now we think of the next one.

    Q: What did you think before Sergio Pérez when his tyre blew? What was going through your mind there?

    FA: I’ve had two moments, that one with Sergio I was so scared and so lucky because I missed the contact by one centimetre. And also at the start into turn one. I locked the tyres and nearly lost the front wheel. As I said, some risky moments. All of them were fine for me today, so I just need to enjoy the result but from tomorrow working in Germany race because we need to raise our game.

    Q: Nico, now you’re heading to Germany. Second grand prix victory this season and you have a German manufacturer in Mercedes. It’s going to be a fantastic event in Germany isn’t it, next week?

    NR: Yeah, for sure. Going from the team’s home grand prix here to my second home grand prix – I already had one – fortunately for me I have two home grands prix, I managed to win that in Monaco. Second one coming up at Nürburgring. And it’s very special. I’m very proud to be German, driving a Silver Arrow, going to the Nürburgring, the history there, and having that great car that I have at the moment, really looking forward to that.

    Q: The tide’s going to change a little bit, isn’t it? You seem to have a car that’s competitive during the race. The tyre degradation wasn’t nearly as bad. Is there any chance, do you think, that this championship could be turning a tide here against Red Bull?

    NR: Well, I wouldn’t talk about that just yet but definitely the team has done such a good job during the season. Already in the winter, to come up with such a quick car, which we’ve had all year in qualifying, and now also progressing with tyre management and getting that better and better to allow us to win races now, that’s fantastic to see and really gives me… yeah, just very exciting.

    Q: Where you happy to continue racing when you were told about the tyre issue?

    NR: It’s definitely something that needs to be looked into, yeah? Because too much of that today, that’s for sure. I had one too – but got a bit lucky there with the safety car so that worked out great.

    PRESS CONFERENCE

    Q: Nico, congratulations, great win for Mercedes, based just a few kilometres down the road from this Silverstone circuit. What does this win mean to you, and to them?

    NR: Yeah, fantastic day definitely, and it’s very special because it’s the home grand prix of the team and the factory is ten minutes away. A lot of people, a lot of my fellow team members and colleagues are in the grandstands, watching today and it’s very, very nice that I was able to give them such a great race and such a great result. They really deserve it – you really deserve it because you’ve worked so well all season. It’s great to see the momentum we have in the team at the moment.

    Q: There was obviously some brilliant driving, some brilliant overtaking but no doubt the big story coming out of this obviously is the situation with the tyres. Your thoughts on what we’ve seen today.

    NR: Definitely that’s a problem. Too many tyre failures and they must look into that and see what can be done.

    Q: Mark, you almost got him at the end. 0.7 seconds as you crossed the finish line of a race you’ve won twice – you obviously enjoy it very much here. Great recovery though, after a poor start. Just listening to the tone of your radio messages, is it tempting to say that you feel a win got away from you today?

    MW: Oh yes, it’s easy to say that. With ten laps to go when you can see the win in sight. It is mixed feelings when you finish seven-tenths behind Nico for the win. But he’s also out there doing his things, so he deserved the win. We did recover. I think we had a bit of luck after that but we’ve got to be there to capitalise on it. We had a good strategy, obviously I pushed very hard on the laps I had to do the business. The start… I don’t know. I have no idea how we can get so good some weekends and then not at others. That was a big negative for us. And then Grosjean – someone, I think it was him – touched my front wing at turn one. I had to get that changes at the first stop. And then the race really reset from there. The safety cars obviously helped – although I didn’t want them because of the reasons why they were happening. Obviously it’s very nervous for all the drivers to see that happening. In the end, very, very good result for myself, for the team, still go something out of it, what was… looked like a pretty random weekend for everyone on race day. I want to thank all the English and British fans for the support that I’ve had over the years racing here – it’s been a real highlight for me to race at this circuit. So, very much looking forward to the next race and hoping to challenge again. I was happy with my performance today.

    Q: You mentioned it’s a nervous time for the drivers. Four left-rear tyre failures, one front-left tyre failure. Your thoughts on that – and what it feels like to know you’ve got to carry on and press in that situation.

    RB: Well the team are trying to keep us up to date as best they can. Obviously it’s a little bit of a moving target for them as well. They are doing their job to inform us as much as they can. It’s not a slow circuit, it’s very quick, we’re committed to the high-speed stuff here, 100 per cent most of the time. It’s not December yet, so I’ll stay quiet.

    Q: Fernando, a very quick call when Vettel retired there, to come in and make a stop. Dropped you down to eighth. I was wondering whether the team had made a mistake there but you managed to fight your way through some amazing overtakes. Did you think you might have blown it at that point? And your thoughts on the race.

    FA: No, obviously it was an unlucky situation. They called me in around Turn Five. So, Vettel was not having the problem yet at that point they call me. We were in this lap and we try to pass Webber and Kimi, they were slowing down a little bit in front of us, so we committed to stop before Sebastian’s problem. And then yes, I go out of the pits and I see ‘Safety Car Deployed.’ Obviously it was the worst time possible to have a safety car, when you have just pitted, and we lost an extra five positions. I don’t know how many overtakings I did all the whole race. The start was probably the worst start of years. Probably. I was fighting with Hülkenberg in Turn Three, Turn Four, and I remember he was not in the first positions on the grid so I realised I was quite far down there. After the start we recovered some positions, some safety car moments as we touch on, and then the last big push at the end as we try to get a podium. We did it, it’s a fantastic result for our very difficult weekend.  Sometimes we have very good pace, we have a car that is able to fight for the wins and we are out of the podium. This weekend everything went a little bit on the wrong side for us, we get the podium and Sebastian doesn’t finish the race. It’s one of these weekends where the result is very good but the feeling is that we must improve for next weekend.

    Q: Obviously on the day when your main title rival retires, you want to try to take 25 points and not 15 but the qualifying situation really wouldn’t allow you to do that today. What do you go away from this weekend and back to Maranello telling the team?

    FA: Well it was not the qualifying, it was the weekend in general. We were normally very fast on Fridays, on the long run pace. It was not the case here. We were not fast on qualifying and not fast on the race – so definitely was the overall weekend we didn’t manage to make the tyres work. We’ve been very lucky – unlucky with the safety car moment that came out but very lucky with the first corner, that it was very close with Mark and Grosjean I think. In the first stop, lap nine, I had a tyre problem also. My tyre was finished and disintegrate in the last corner. For me it was the right rear that I think was new compared to all the other failures and if this happened like Felipe – that I think was in Turn Five when it happened – then I lose the race. For me it happened in the last corner and I pit. At the end it was a very lucky race and I just need to be very thankful for the team, for the luck and try to improve for next weekend.

    QUESTIONS FROM THE FLOOR

    Q: (Graham Keilloh –  F1 Plus) Early in the race, after the first three rear tyre failures, there was some radio contact on the television advising drivers to stay off the kerbs, but it seems subsequently that wasn’t really heeded; just talk us through the thought process of that, why you subsequently decided to take the risk?

    NR: Are you saying we were still taking the risks of going on the kerbs? Well, for myself I wasn’t, I was staying off the kerbs and I got a tyre problem myself, but it worked out well, I was able to pit before it broke apart because the safety car came out. I was a bit lucky there. And then after that, when Mark was chasing me, it was a compromise between how fast is he coming at me and how much am I going to take out of the tyres, so I was staying off the kerbs, taking it easy in the high speed where the most damage is done. Then I had to pick up the pace a little bit towards the end as he was getting quite close so that was really difficult to judge.

    Q: Mark, they broadcast at least four or five messages from Rocky (Guillaume Rocquelin) to Sebastian telling him to stay off the kerbs; were you getting a similar amount of that kind of message?

    MW: Yeah, Simon was keeping me up to date with the… That’s all they could give us was staying off the kerbs because they were saying that they probably didn’t really know why the tyres were failing at the rate they were. So yeah, I did what I could in all the right hand corners to have… turn one, exit of seven, also Copse and Becketts and Stowe, all the fast corners, trying to stay away from there. It’s not always easy but in general I tried to adhere to the advice, because yes, you want to gain a little bit here and there, but as Nico touched on, it’s not much fun driving a Formula One car on three tyres so you have to make sure that you do what you can to listen to the team; they’re on the pit wall with the most information so you have to do what they say.

    FA: Same, always the same. They kept telling me to avoid the kerbs but obviously if you’re in position twelve you need to attack, you need to change the racing line, you need to use the DRS. This is a circuit where we’ve been racing for 12 years in my case and I’ve never had these problems. I think the kerbs were perfectly OK.

    Q: (Mike Doodson – Auto Action) Mark, you’re not the kind of guy who normally blames his equipment, less so perhaps than other people, but this story of your starts goes back a long way. No doubt you’ve analysed it over and over again. Looking back today, was it possibly a human failure on your side or was it an equipment shortcoming of some kind?

    MW: I need to look. We know it’s not the strength of our situation up until Monaco. I think Monaco and Canada, same procedure and we’re running into the back of these guys. Same in Canada, I went round Bottas and we were very very strong off the line. Today, reverse was in gear. I was obviously ready for the start, everything was set, but I didn’t go anywhere, obviously. I think it was quite slippery off the line but we had a lot of issues getting away. It is frustrating, mate, but I need to go through it and we’re working on things to make it more consistent in the future, but it’s just such an important part of the weekend and it’s a no-brainer that you have to get it right, all the effort that goes in. There’s no question about it, it’s cost a lot of good points over the time but yeah, it shouldn’t be that difficult but it turns out that we’ve got to improve on that area and I’m happy to be part of that.

    Q: (Jaime Rodriguez – El Mundo) Fernando, in the last races, every Sunday you seem to have to overtake five, six positions from the start to the end; I wonder if you would explain what you feel, both physically and psychologically?

    FA: I’ve been doing this for the last five years, unfortunately. It would be nice to start on the front row of the grid but we are not good enough on Saturdays and it’s something we try to work on as a team: the package, car performance, tyre preparations, driver maximising the lap. Whatever we are missing on Saturdays, we haven’t been on pole position for a long time but we fight, we gain some good experiences in my career, especially in 2008 and 2009 were maybe not so bad seasons in the end, with no good results but very good experience and you try to play safe, obviously when you are fighting very hard with some rookie drivers etc it requires a little bit of extra care but we managed today to do some good moves and some good points, but as I said, it’s something that we don’t like to do and we would like to improve Saturday’s situation.

    Q: (Christobal Rosaleny – Car and Driver) To all of you: I know Nurburgring is not like Silverstone in terms of fast corners and all of that, but if somebody tells you that the same thing is going to happen, that the tyres could explode there, would you race or would you tell the people that’s enough?

    NR: Well, we shouldn’t get into that situation. We need to do what needs to be done to sort it out and make the tyres last.

    MW: I think we’ve been trying to have input for the last three years and it’s deaf ears. Anyway, we’re part of the package, part of the show. The show goes on by the looks of it.

    FA: Yes. Same. Theoretically the cars are the same all year. They were OK on most circuits so it should be OK, but for sure it’s something that what we saw today is not good but we drive the cars so we understand nothing about what is the real problem or what it is the real solution so it’s a question for them, for sure.

    Q: (Luke Smith – NBC Sports) Nico, before Sebastian’s stoppage, the gap between Sebastian and you had remained quite constant. Do you think you would have been able to catch him if he hadn’t have had the retirement?

    NR: I was trying, I was pushing hard trying to stay with him but it wouldn’t have been possible.  No, I would have been close all race but to catch him and pass, I didn’t have enough speed unfortunately. But I think pace-wise, possibly I was a little bit quicker, yeah, because very often I was able to come back to him once I started pushing again before the pit stops and when you’re in the dirty air from the guy in front, your tyres wear a little bit more and you lose out. I think I had good pace in the race today.

    Q: (Stewart Bell – Herald Sun) Mark, you were on fire from that last safety car period to the end; what was that like for you, that last stint, especially given it was your last British Grand Prix?

    MW: Yeah, it felt pretty good mate, I knew that I was going to make pretty light work of the guys ahead of me because they were on old tyres. I wanted information on Nico, I wanted to know what compound he was on and how his pace was before the safety car because I hadn’t seen him before in the race at any stage. They said that he was pretty quick so I was pretty keen to get past those guys early and then go from there, but both of us managed to get to the end of course on the limit but also managing the scenario with the tyres. So yeah, it was a nice finish to race. It would have been about a hundred cherries on top if I’d managed to get past him but I didn’t. He deserved the win and we made him work for it which was good and rewarding, but we could have got much more out of the car in the race today to be honest.

    Q: (Michael Schmidt – Auto, Motor und Sport) I think all of you were asked by your race engineers after the tyre failures to stay off the kerbs; how much did it affect your racing, in particular Mark and Fernando who had been in fights or battles with other drivers?

    MW: Well, it’s a compromise. You want to still push as hard as possible but you have to check your line a bit, change your trajectory, the radius is tighter, obviously, in certain corners, i.e. the quick stuff, Copse, Stowe, turn one, staying away from there. It turns out maybe it wasn’t really the kerbs, who knows but it’s just better to factor in everything that you possibly can. Some laps, when you’re in disturbed air and you get behind a car and you get a little bit wide then that’s life, you’ve got to… you can’t be super accurate when you’re tucked up behind the guy in the quick stuff so that’s just the decisions you have to make and yeah, we managed that as best we could.

    FA: I didn’t change, I didn’t change lines. I didn’t change lines. I was fighting with twelve cars all the race through so you go in the dirty air, let’s say, and you lose downforce and you go straight out over the exit kerb. As I said, it’s hard to believe that the kerbs were the problem because we’ve been racing here for 12 years with those kerbs.

    Q: (Jaime Rodriguez – El Mundo) Nico, do you think that without the Montmelo test Mercedes could be winning races like now?

    NR: For sure, yeah. Definitely.

    Ends

  • Hamilton thrilled to see huge crowd; Paul penalised

    Silverstone, 29 June 2013: In a late-day decision after scrutiny, Sahara Force India driver Paul Di Resta who qualified in P5 was forced to start at the back of the grid after stewards penalised the team for the Force India car failed to maintain the weight of its car to the required standard and fell short by 1.5 kg. Sutil will start on P6.

    Saturday FIA Press Conference:

    Lewis Hamilton of Mercedes AMG Petronas flanked by teammate Nico Rosberg (to his left) and Sebastian Vettel of Red Bull after taking the Silverstone pole on Saturday. An FIA photo
    Lewis Hamilton of Mercedes AMG Petronas flanked by teammate Nico Rosberg (to his left) and Sebastian Vettel of Red Bull after taking the Silverstone pole on Saturday. An FIA photo

    DRIVERS

    1 – Lewis HAMILTON (Mercedes)

    2 – Nico ROSBERG (Mercedes)

    3 – Sebastian VETTEL (Red Bull Racing)

    TV UNILATERAL

    Q: Lewis, a great lap there at the end to take pole position at your home grand prix. How does that feel?

    Lewis HAMILTON: It’s incredible! It feels just like it did in 2007.  Just to see the crowd here today is fantastic – such a great turnout from everyone. So that was a lap for them. I hope that tomorrow we can do something special for them but this is really down to the team. They’ve been doing a phenomenal job, improving the car constantly. I haven’t been feeling 100 per cent comfortable all weekend – so I was really happy to finally get a lap.

    Q: Nico, your thoughts on qualifying. That’s the fifth time in six races that Mercedes has been on pole position – and disputing it between you two as well. So, your thoughts on today.

    Nico ROSBERG: It’s definitely a really, really great feeling, to go into qualifying and having such a car. To definitely have the fastest car… it’s really, really cool. It’s a great job that the team has done to get us to where we are now. And we’re also improving on Sundays – hopefully. I’m confident we have improved so tomorrow should be a bit better. I’m sure that still there are going to be other teams that are a little bit stronger than us but maybe starting on front for sure is going to help and maybe it’s going to still be possible to get a great result.

    Q: Sebastian, there seemed to be some different tactics at play with regard to tomorrow’s race in terms of your saving one tyre of tyre, Mercedes saving another type of tyre. You see this as a very tactical type of weekend clearly.

    Sebastian VETTEL: We’ll obvious see what happens tomorrow. It’s a long race but honestly very happy today. I don’t know, either Lewis found a short cut or he has something special around here. A phenomenal lap. I think it wasn’t in reach today. I was very happy with the lap I had at the end. And I think it was very close with Mark as well. I think we did what we could for the team and, yeah, it’s always nice to position well in qualifying. Especially around here qualifying is good fun, enjoying the high-speed corners and looking forward to tomorrow, for the race. We’ll see how well we are with tyres, looking after them. But as I said, for now very happy for the team. Hard to put the car in third place, Mark right behind, so I think it’s a good position to start from. Obviously our factory is very close to this track. Milton Keynes is not far away and yeah, I’m looking forward to tomorrow.

    Q: Lewis, we’ve seen obviously this year quite a few times that qualifying is one thing but the race is another. What about tomorrow? How do you feel Mercedes will fare against the Red Bulls in the British Grand Prix?

    LH: I think undoubtedly it’s going to be tough for us to keep Sebastian behind but our long run pace wasn’t as bad as we’ve seen in the past, so I’m hoping with the temperatures and a bit of care, we can nurture the tyres to get a good result. I’m going to be pushing, giving it my all tomorrow, as I’m sure Nico will as well, to finish up ahead.

    PRESS CONFERENCE

    Q: Lewis, difficult day for you yesterday, as you were saying in your comments after the free practice. You weren’t happy with the balance of the car. It’s quite a turn around from you and the team. Can you talk a little bit about that – and also the crowd power aspect of things: did you feel that today?

    LH: The car is… obviously as Nico was saying, we’ve got a great car and to fine-tune it seems to be a little bit harder than what I’ve been experiencing in the past. So really trying to get the car underneath me and feeling comfortable and having an equal balance. With a Formula One car you’re always trying to balance it on a knife-edge. Just for some reason with this car I’m struggling to do that. In the past I would aim do that all the time. But got closer. We made the right steps, made a change going into qualifying which helped – still not perfect but it helped. And then the crowd to make a huge difference. After seeing them turn up in their thousands and seeing all the flags waving. Of course this weekend I come here with an extra boost of energy and just want to pay them back. Every year I come… this is the first time since 2008 that I’ve had a car that I’ve really been able to compete with so I’m really, really proud of what the team have done and I hope the fans can have a good evening and bring us some good luck tomorrow.

    Q: Nico, we mentioned earlier on that the last six races have really been all about this, particularly in qualifying, between the two of you. You’ve had the upper hand a few times, Lewis has had the upper hand a few times. Can you talk a little bit about how you’re enjoying this in-house battle with someone you’ve known and raced against for such a long time?

    NR: Yeah, it’s a big battle we have, and usually it’s very close – not today – Lewis did a great lap in the end. It’s also a really, really big push, also for the whole team, that we’re pushing each other all the time, and that’s really good. We’re really lucky because we have a great atmosphere at the moment in the team, everybody’s going in the same direction and sticking together, so it’s fantastic momentum that we have at the moment.

    Q: Sebastian, do you feel that you’ve got the most complete package for this weekend? Obviously you’ve given a bit away in qualifying but you’re here, some of your rivals for the championship are behind you tomorrow, how’s your approach?

    SV: Well, certainly we’re not giving away anything consciously or on purpose. They are bloody quick in qualifying, I think that’s what it is. I think we are not too bad but obviously they seem to be in a different world on Saturday afternoons. I think something, yeah, they manage pretty well around the tyres which allows them to get a very, very strong lap in. Plus Nico and Lewis are doing a great job. Doesn’t help if you want to qualify on pole. But points are scored on Sunday and the last couple of races have been pretty good for us.  I think, to sum it up in both – in qualifying and in race – so for sure today I think P3 was our maximum but for tomorrow y’know, who knows? They are also getting better. It helps the more time we spend on the tyres – let’s leave it there – and yeah, I think we all try to understand more and more and as the season goes on we do get better and there’s less and less room for improvement. For the moment it seems that we have a strong car in the race, maybe a little bit better than the Mercedes. Whether it will be like that tomorrow? Well, we’ll find out. But that’s the fun part. I’m looking forward to finding out.

    QUESTIONS FROM THE FLOOR

    Q: (Kate Walker – GP Week) Lewis, obviously none of us experience putting together a pole lap like the one we just watched and it really was a phenomenal performance. Could you explain what it’s like actually sitting in the cockpit; do you sit there completing your sectors going ‘ wow, I’m really on it’ or is it only afterwards that you realise how well you’ve done?

    LH: No. You have a delta time on your dashboard so you can tell as soon as you cross the line into turn one and when you start the lap whether you’re up or not and so you kind of keep checking it, halfway through, after each corner, after each sector so already by turn nine I could see that I was two and a half tenths up and you just don’t want to lose that, so you have to take extra care after that, but also you want to improve. But yeah, you also feel that it’s a feeling having the tyres up to temperature, the brakes up to temperature and the car just beneath you and not trying to get away from you. Sometimes it is like a wild bull, you’re trying to tame it which is very very difficult to do. But when you do, and you pull out a lap like that, it really felt like 2007. I couldn’t hear anyone still, because the car’s too loud, hopefully I got a good roar today.

    Q: It looked like the track improved a lot, two or three tenths improvement from session to session this afternoon.

    LH: Yeah, each time we go out we seemed to… which is kind of normal but it’s quite a good surface here at Silverstone so the grip does continue to go down (on the circuit) and hopefully that will be good for us tomorrow.

    Q: (Julian Harris – City AM) My question is for Lewis as well: are you still learning this car, are you still finding out more each week and do you think you’re getting better in each race, or do you think you’ve pretty much got it sussed now?

    LH: I definitely haven’t got it sussed. This weekend’s been a tough weekend. Every weekend is tough, even if you are used to a car it’s tough but I really have been struggling with the car, trying to tune it, trying to get it to behave the way I want it to, and then drive it and extract what I want from it. Out of all the cars I’ve driven, it’s one of the hardest cars to drive. So when you pull it together, it’s a great car and obviously very quick. Each weekend I’m working as hard as I can, each weekend it does feel like it’s improving a little bit. We made another improvement on the brakes this weekend which is another step in the right direction so I hope we can continue going forwards.

    Q: (Peter Farkas – Auto-Motor, Hungary) Lewis, obviously Paddy Lowe is now at Mercedes and he is here, working with you. Is it a boost for you personally to have him in the team since you have known him for a long time, and did you influence the decision that he would join the team in any way?

    LH: I don’t believe I had any influence on him coming here. I think that was a decision of his and Ross and Toto. Is it a boost? It’s a boost to the team. We already have some incredibly talented people in the team, doing fantastic things and coming up with great designs but the stronger the package, the better it is for everyone. He’s a good addition to the team and hopefully he will only help us moving forwards.

    Q: (Livio Oricchio – O Estado de Sao Paulo) Sebastian, you started Q2 with hard tyres. It looks like you are very comfortable with tyre wear… No?

    SV: You said I started Q2 on the hard tyres?

    Q: (Livio Oricchio – O Estado de Sao Paulo) Yes.

    SV: No. I did only one run in Q2 with the soft tyres, well, medium.

    Q: (Livio Oricchio – O Estado de Sao Paulo) Well, it looks like you are very comfortable with tyre wear for the race. Is that correct?

    SV: Well, it depends. I think comfortable or not depends on where the others are. I think we were happy with the runs that we had yesterday. I had another one this morning, so I think we are pretty happy with that but it’s difficult to judge, because you don’t know what fuel loads other people are running, the usual stuff, so we will find out tomorrow plus in the race it’s always a little bit different. Tomorrow is supposed to be hotter which is nice for the crowd after the last couple of years, I think it was always quite miserable on Friday, so now we’ve had a good Saturday and tomorrow, as I said, again a little bit warmer so it could change the balance of the car and how the tyres work. I think we’ve saved as many tyres as we could and the ones that we liked so let’s see what we can do tomorrow.

    Q: (Andrea Cremonesi – La Gazzetta dello Sport) Sebastian, Alonso is only tenth today. It’s good news, thinking about the championship?

    SV: Well, I didn’t really think about that. I think it’s not good news for him. For sure he wanted to be a little bit higher up as well as Ferrari. It’s a bit of a surprise. I think they’ve been very competitive here the last couple of years but this is also a circuit – let’s not forget – where the balance is very important so even if you have a good car, if it’s not coming together it can make a big difference, especially over one lap. And the other thing, that’s why I’m not too interested to look at the results today. In the race we’ve seen that a lot of things can happen and people starting from further back can still score a lot of points and come through the field, so I think in terms of race pace and tyre wear they will be strong tomorrow and surely, should everything go as per plan for them, they will finish higher up than tenth. Everything else, I think, would be a surprise.

    Q: (Sarah Holt – CNN.com) Lewis, before you got in the car before qualifying, we saw you wave to the crowd. Did you feel, having lost pole to Nico over the last few races, that you needed to psyche yourself up and find something extra today?

    LH: Not really. It’s not about psyching myself up because I’m always mad for it, I’m always on the limit, I’m always on the edge. I always have the determination and the will but it’s just trying to get my car to where I want it to be so when I went out there, I was hoping that my car was where I wanted it to be and it’s also… The fans sit there for a long long time during the day and don’t really get to see our faces so it’s the one opportunity that I do get to see them and try to extract what I can from them, because the support means a lot.

    Q: (Derek Bish – Anglia Newspapers) Lewis, you’ve obviously been here in junior formulas as well; what sets apart the Lewis Hamilton that puts together a lap like that today from the one who was here in GP2 and before that?

    LH: Yeah, my age, getting older, older and wiser, I think. I’m still very much like the GP2 driver I was. I just have more knowledge now. Of course, we all change over time but yeah, I think I’m a little bit more sensible and a little bit better at making decisions than I was back then. And hopefully that approach helps me win in the car.

    Q: (Phil Agius – Racing Post) Sebastian, Toro Rosso have been going well  this weekend and I think Daniel Ricciardo is sixth on the grid. Would you be comfortable with another Australian teammate next season?

    SV: I think first you should see the individual rather than the country where he comes from but surely I haven’t got a problem with Australia. I like going there, it’s a nice track, we go every year too, so I’m looking forward to going back next year. Congratulations to Daniel. It seems that both of them, the whole weekend… I don’t know what happened to Jean-Eric in qualifying but both of them had a car that was good enough to show their potential so happy for them and hopefully they can keep it up throughout the race and score some good points for the team. In a way, obviously, we’re all fighting for ourselves; secondly we are fighting for our team but obviously we have more connection to Toro Rosso than Mercedes for example so not a surprise is it? So yeah, all the best to Daniel and Jean-Eric tomorrow.

    Ends

  • Team leaders agree Tribunal process as fair: Friday press meet

    TEAM REPRESENTATIVES – Graeme LOWDON (Marussia), Eric BOULLIER (Lotus), Christian HORNER (Red Bull Racing), Ross BRAWN (Mercedes), Martin WHITMARSH (McLaren)

    PRESS CONFERENCE

    Gentlemen, a general question about the International Tribunal. It’s the first time it’s been used in Formula One. What did you think about it and what about the outcome? First of all, Eric.

    Eric BOULLIER: I think the system went quite well I think. All the judges and the way it was working went quite smoothly and as far as I understand the process was fine.

    Graham?

    Graeme LOWDON: As Eric says, the process itself, it’s the first time we’ve seen it in action and from what we could see it was a pretty fair and transparent process. We were happy to see the outcome in terms of how the Tribunal saw it. I can’t really comment on the penalty that they suggested as I think that is entirely down to the Tribunal but the thing we could probably do with a bit more clarity on, is that the Tribunal referred to the mitigating circumstances in choosing the penalty and we couldn’t really see very many. The mitigating circumstances didn’t look terribly mitigating. Perhaps that’s something that will come over time with the process.

    Martin?

    Martin WHITMARSH: I haven’t got much to add really. We didn’t take an active role. I know some of my colleagues here were there, they saw it. I think it’s clearly an independent process and that’s a good thing. In regards to this particular case I think others are better equipped to comment on it.

    Ross, obviously you were involved – your thoughts?

    Ross BRAWN: Very involved yes. I think rightly or wrongly there has been criticism in the past of the process and I think what the FIA has done, particularly with the president of the FIA, is put in place a process which I don’t believe there can be any criticism of it in that respect. It’s an independent tribunal. People may always have their opinions about the opinions of the Tribunal but I think the process itself can’t be criticised. This is the first time we’ve seen it in action and I think we can have confidence in the future that at least it will be independent. My understanding was that the selection of the judges was completely independent, coming from a potential panel of 12, people who obviously have some knowledge of sport, particularly motor sport and they judged the case on the facts and did what they felt was appropriate. We can have opinions about the outcome of the case but I think the process is very encouraging for the future and one that should give teams in Formula One or teams in motor sport confidence.

    Christian, your thoughts on the process and the outcome?

    Christian HORNER: I think the process was fine. It was the first time it happened. I think that the relevant parties made their case and that the judges did a good in running the Tribunal and had all the facts placed in front of them. The verdict they reached was, I think, the right one. The penalty they applied? I have to be a bit careful because he’s bigger than I am, sitting next to me! Possibly it was a bit soft but, you know, it was a fair process and it was certainly interesting to see how it panned out. I think the biggest thing to come out of it is clarity. We need to know what the rules are – whether you can test a 2011 car for more than a 1000km or whether you can test a 2013 car etc, etc. The big thing for us moving on from the Tribunal is to get absolute clarity for the remainder of this year and moving forward as to what constitutes testing and what does not.

    Ross, I’ll give you the chance to come back on that. Christian says it was a bit soft. It was the penalty your QC suggested at the end of the proceedings, so do you see it that way.

    RB: No, I’m bound to disagree with Christian.

    I’m sure there’ll be more on this later. Returning to Eric then, a new consortium since we were last all together has come in and bought a shareholding in your team, a 35 percent shareholding. Why this moment and why are they the right investor?

    EB: Why this moment? I think it’s just because the opportunity came up. As Genii Capital said a long time ago they are picking the right partner to join the team. We were the only team in terms of structuring only one owner. They were thinking for the right partner and once they found it I guessed they signed it and I guess this is the timing.

    Obviously with Mark Webber announcing his retirement there’s been a lot of speculation suggesting Kimi Raikkonen your lead driver is a target for Red Bull. He says he’s out of contract at the end of this season, what do you say?

    EB: I say the same, he’s out of contract, yes! It’s going to be his decision, obviously. I think yes, Red Bull is chasing Kimi and we want to Kimi. Kimi will decided what he wants to do. He will decide what’s best for him. He knows what he has with us. He gets what he could get. It’s attractive to go to Red Bull as well, but he knows what he has. Now we are just talking with him and seeking some let’s say understanding of where we go and what we are building because in terms of ownership we are new, just four years existence. I think so far he is happy with what he has.

    Christian, I’ll give you a chance to come back on that. Obviously you are believed to have said this morning that Raikkonen and the two Toro Rosso drivers are the likely candidates. Can you share your thoughts on Mark Webber’s announcement, the timing of it and where you go from here?

    CH: Firstly, Mark has obviously chosen to announce his retirement. I think we need to recognise everything Mark has done for the team. Since joining in 2007 he’s grown with the team and all his nine victories so far and his 30-odd podiums have come in Red Bull racing cars and he’s made a significant contribution to the three Constructors’ World Championships we’ve managed to achieve and how the team has performed over the last few years. Obviously a big decision for any driver to draw a close to their career. He’s decided to do that early and therefore he’s removed himself from any speculation about next year and that puts us in a situation where we want to pick the best candidate for that role. We’re fortunate that we have the pool of talented young drivers at Toro Rosso to draw upon and we will also gauge what else is available in the marketplace. Kimi Raikkonen is a driver you would be foolish to ignore. We’re going to take our time, it’s important that we make the right decision; we don’t need to be in a rush. We’ll evaluate the options available to us and try to make the best decision we can.

    Going back to you Ross. It looked like the race tyre management was better, particularly on Hamilton’s car, in Canada. Montreal obviously doesn’t treat the tyres quite as roughly as this place. You were quick this afternoon in free practice but how do you feel you’re fixed for this grand prix?

    RB: It’s a little bit difficult to judge at the moment. The tyres are still not where we expect them to be on Sunday, they look a little but dry, they look a little bit cool. So we’ve got to try to anticipate what we we’re going to face on Sunday but it didn’t look too bad. Graining was the thing that was slowly creeping up on a number of cars. You could see it on the TV and we weren’t unique in that respect. It may be a slightly different issue we’ll have here than at some other races. I think the thing I would comment on is that we know there is a cliff that we tend to fall over and if we don’t get to the edge we’re fine. Maybe take a race like Malaysia, we weren’t on the edge of the cliff, we had a good strong race the whole race. It depending on how close we get to that edge before it becomes a problem. Clearly there was a problem in Barcelona but it may no be an issue here. We’ll have to wait and see.

    OK, going to Graeme. We’ve heard you speaking out recently about not having a commercial deal in place. Why now and is there any progress on that?

    GL: Well why now, it’s not just now actually, we say it pretty much any time. I find myself as part of our management team in a different situation to the other gentlemen in this press conference in that our team doesn’t have an agreement with the commercial rights holder. We are fully part of the process for negotiating a new Concorde Agreement – we play our part in that process like all the other teams. But like everybody else here I have an obligation, together with our management team, to our employees and their families. These are people who are earning their livelihoods in Formula One and I have an obligation to them. We find ourselves in a situation where, at present, there is no Concorde Agreement, so there is a gap of some period of time and who knows how long that time could be. Certainly the Concorde Agreement is not going to be signed next week and in theory it could go on for years. There is no finite time limit on that. Now all the other teams on the grid including those in front and behind us have a bi-lateral agreement with the commercial rights holder and for whatever reason we don’t and I think that’s an unusual situation. There’s a very clear structure to this sport and certain companies play a very dominant position in that structure and we have to operate within that structure and it is quite difficult, in the situation that we currently find ourselves in. Why that should be the case I really don’t know. It would certainly be nice. I think everybody here would agree, whether it’s a sporting matter or a financial matter or commercial, all you ask for is a level playing field and for all teams to be treated equally. I think it’s a reasonably straightforward thing that we’re looking for.

    Thank you for that. Coming to you Martin. Obviously today the World Motor Sport Council has issued quite a lot of changes for next year, among them the new penalty points system for drivers. I wonder if you would like to comment on that and any other things in here that you find of interest?

    MW: Well, I hope you don’t test me on it, because there’s quite a bit tome there and it came out whilst we were on the pit wall. On the penalty points, it’s been discussed for a long time. It’s clear; it’s written down. Potentially you can imagine being in a situation as a driver or as a team with a driver who is close to being prohibited. I think that could be uncomfortable but we’ll have to see how that develops. The other very significant decisions that have been announced are the introduction of four in-season tests next year. That introduction, not everyone is comfortable to have more testing but I think that it replaces quite a lot of other extraneous testing is probably a beneficial things, given that it’s being arranged in Europe at circuits after we’ve raced there. I think they are fairly sensible proposals on testing and certainly it’s good for young drivers and people who are trying to develop young drivers. I think it’s a good initiative. The other is obviously a further restriction on aerodynamic testing, both wind tunnel testing and CFD capacity. I think that’s prudent and sensible and something that we have to do to try and develop more sustainable business models across the whole grid. I think there are no great surprises. Obviously a lot of work, manoeuvring and voting has gone on to arrive at some of those decisions but generally nothing surprising. I think most of them are pretty sensible and the right thing for the sport.

    QUESTIONS FROM THE FLOOR

    Q: (Ian Parkes – PA) Question to Christian and Eric: if you two guys are squaring up to a tussle over Kimi Räikkönen, with the exception of money – bearing in mind he’s already quite a wealthy guy – what do you think will be the attraction to either a) bring him to your team, Christian? or b) keep him at your team, Eric?

    CH: At the end of the day I guess it’s going to be the equipment at their disposal. They’re going to want to drive – any driver, any competitive driver – is going to want to be in the most competitive environment that he can be in. I guess that’s the same for Kimi as it would be for any driver. But let’s just be clear here, we’re not just looking at Kimi Räikkönen, we have Daniel Ricciardo and Jean-Eric Vergne who are true contenders for that seat. We just need to take a bit of time to look at all of the options available to us.

    Eric?

    EB: I think the environment he has with us obviously suits him. I think he told this many times. As Christian says, he’s a driver, a competitor, so he can see every year we keep improving the team performance and obviously we expect to keep going in this way and match at least Christian’s team’s performance as soon as possible. So, being part of the environment you can like and build around yourself is one of the nicest challenges for a driver.

    Q: (Luc Domenjoz – Le Matin) For Christian Horner. We heard what you say about Kimi Räikkönen and the two Toro Rosso drivers but what about Sébastien Buemi? We understand he makes a valuable job as a third driver but would you consider him for next year and if so what are his chances?

    CH: Sébastien has made a great contribution this year as third driver and doing development work in the simulator. He had a great run at Le Mans last weekend which was super to see – but he’s not a contender for a race seat at Red Bull Racing. He’s an important member of the team but our choice is more focussed on the current, active Formula One drivers.

    Q: (Luke Smith – NBC Sports) Question for Christian: are you looking for a driver to simply accommodate Sebastian Vettel or someone who can actively challenge and rival him?

    CH: We want the best driver that we can possibly get. Sebastian wants to be challenged, wants to be pushed and from our perspective there are two championships. There’s a Drivers’ World Championship and a Constructors’ World Championship and you don’t win a Constructors’ Championship with one driver. So, from our perspective, we want to field the most competitive line-up that we can and do our very best to support both drivers as we always have done.

    Q: (Bob McKenzie – Daily Express) Sorry, this question comes up occasionally so you’ve probably got the stock answers but what do you think it does for the image of Formula One – particularly here, at the biggest Friday crowd anywhere in the world – to have them sitting around for ninety minutes watching virtually nothing? It just doesn’t look good, does it?

    GL: Well, it doesn’t look great but equally I think it’s not the easiest thing to solve. I think Formula One is getting much closer to the fans and I think that’s a really good thing and there’s a lot of initiatives that are being done through the sport, through the teams and to help in other ways, to try and get ourselves nearer and try and give the fans more to engage with. I don’t know what the solution is, Bob, as far as livening up a session like that. It was quite difficult circumstances. It does just seem to happen at Silverstone a little bit more often so I really don’t know what that solution is but I do think that in other areas teams really are doing quite a lot to engage the fans and make being a Formula One fan more interesting, more exciting and more rewarding.

    EB: I can understand the question, the frustration for the fans but I do tend to… in other ways, the debate is coming back all the time, because if you look at Wimbledon it’s the same, they stop the game when it’s raining. Any other sport is the same at least, so if we don’t run or the car does run there’s a safety issue but there are many other issues and we are the first ones to ask our drivers for the cars to be on track when we can. We try to do our best to engage with the fans and to do whatever we can but we obviously can’t be blamed if the car is not on the track when it’s raining and there’s too much water on the track.

    MW: Well, it’s not good, clearly, and I think we’ve got to be conscious of that. It has been announced today, as some of you may know from the World Motor Sport Council that there’s an extra set of dry tyres available which have to be consumed in the first half hour of the first practice session, so that’s a clear step in dry conditions, where we’ve had circuits which have high levels of evolution and people have been reluctant to go out even in a dry session. In the wet, we’ve got to be very conscious. We’re here at Silverstone, we have a finite number of tyres, so we have three set of wets and four of intermediate tyres and it’s always possible that you need to use those and that being the case, you can’t damage them or use them early in the weekend. So it’s to do with the number of tyres and there’s got to be a balance. You’ve got to be sensible about the number of tyres we can consume during the course of a race weekend. We’ve done something today in the sport about this sort of thing happening in a dry session. It will always be difficult when we have a wet first practice session.

    RB: I think we’ve been proactive with the extra set of tyres that Martin mentioned. They’ve got to be used in the first part of first practice, so you will get cars running. So I think that’s a good initiative. I think the difficulty is, quite frankly, that there’s a fairly high risk in those conditions and if there’s nothing to be gained, the teams tend to be conservative. If we think the race is going to be wet, we think qualifying is going to be wet, then we run. If we don’t – and that’s the forecast we have this weekend – then the objective is not as strong to run in those conditions. It does make it very difficult but we have to acknowledge that it’s not the greatest show when that happens. Luckily the second session was pretty full and there was lots of running thereafter, but if it had been wet all day, then there wouldn’t have been a lot of running.

    CH: I think it’s a great shame for the fans that all the cars are sitting in the garage and they’re sitting in the grandstands getting wet to see their drivers and teams that they want to see out there. From a team perspective, we want to be out there because you want to learn and we’re limited on track testing as it is but unfortunately you can’t fully predict the British summer. And it was a bit marginal, actually. We sent Sebastian out early on to have a look and he said it was right on the edge in terms of aquaplaning and with the limitation on parts and so on, we had to make a decision to say OK, we need to wait a bit later until the circuit conditions improve. It’s not great. What the answer is I don’t know. Wimbledon have got a roof; maybe Silverstone needs to invest in a roof. It might be a good way forward.

    Q: (Mike Casey – Associated Press) We heard from Martin on the rule changes; maybe we could hear from some of the other teams about the penalty system and in-season testing.

    RB: I think the good thing about a penalty system is hopefully we will know exactly what we’re dealing with. It will take away, to some degree some of the subjectivity that’s crept into some of the penalties in the past. Obviously being given the reprimand of a penalty in the first place is still going to be a judgement call so I think that’s something which will be helpful. Other rule changes are really mostly about tidying up the regulations on the technical side and the sporting side for next year. It’s quite a different technical package next year, so there’s been some tidying up of that. In terms of testing itself, I think it’s quite an overhead for the teams to undertake that testing on a regular basis and we have to find a way of making it as cost-effective as we can, because what we don’t want to go back to is having test cars and test teams and all the things that we got rid of a few years ago, because it does then bring a step change in costs. Obviously if we can carry out those tests with the crews that we have already and the cars we have already then it helps a great deal but we’re already hearing of 21 races next year and 21 races along with four tests is going to be quite a strain on the system. I think the teams have to sit down and work out how to organise those tests to have the minimum financial impact.

    EB: To be honest, I haven’t got much to say because both Martin and Ross clearly… I have the same position more or less.

    CH: By and large I think they’re good. I think that the aero restrictions make sense. I think the testing changes make sense. We’ve gone to eight days or four two day tests so we’ve got rid of promotional days and straight line running and so on to now create proper testing, arguably maybe slightly more expensive but it gives the opportunity for young drivers and test drivers to actually run at those events as well as your race drivers. I must admit I’m not a massive fan of the points system, I don’t like the thought of points carrying from one season into the next and that sort of lingering over the driver. In our position, we would have preferred penalties within a season to be dealt with within a year but that’s the way it is. But I think by and large the changes are good and positive. Certainly on the technical side and from a sporting side with the testing, they do make sense.

    Q: (Mike Doodson – Auto Action) Gentlemen, the sport is in a state of limbo at the moment because there’s no Concorde Agreement as Graeme mentioned earlier. And it must be quite embarrassing that this situation is continuing. In any large commercial organisation, when a senior official manager was under threat of legal action, it would be normal for him to step down until that was settled, if only to allow the normal commercial conditions to continue. I wonder if you could comment on whether our commercial leader should step down from his position to allow you to have the serenity you need to continue your business?

    MW: Thank you! I think there’s a certain degree of uncertainty created by not having Concorde Agreements but I think if at the moment the sport does rely upon Bernie to bring these things together, I think we probably have quite a lot of greater levels of uncertainty if Bernie were to step down so I think at the moment, if we’re told again today that the FIA and the commercial rights holder are close  – I think the word is imminent that they will sign a Concorde Agreement, it’s an odd arrangement because at the moment, clearly, as Graeme has reflected, there are ten sets of bi-lateral agreements out there and they’ve got to be stitched together with a broader Concorde Agreement into which the teams haven’t had that much input and that’s probably going to be some uncomfortable pushing together, but hopefully we can do that but I strongly suspect that if we didn’t have Bernie in the mix, that that would take a much longer time and it would be a more difficult process.

    CH: To be quite frank, Formula One is what it is because of Bernie Ecclestone, the way he’s built the sport over the last 35 years, everything we see here is based on what he’s done and achieved and I think that without him we’d be in a lot of trouble. I think that the deals he’s still doing, the circuits and countries that he’s still taking Formula One to is quite outstanding, and while he has the passion and enthusiasm to keep doing his  job, I think it’s in our interests he does it for as long as absolutely possible, because I think the day after he isn’t there the sport is going to be a lot worse off. So whatever his situation is, I think it’s entirely right that he does continue because I can’t see there being a better person to do the role – that none of us fully understand what that role fully constitutes – than Bernie.

    RB: I agree with what a lot of what Christian said, it is a fairly unique situation and the way the sport has evolved. We do have the bi-lateral agreements, commercial agreements with all teams apart from Graeme’s which gives us the financial stability that we need. I think that the grey area is that with no Concorde Agreement there’s no well-defined structure for agreeing new regulations and what’s happening at the moment is the FIA is defaulting to the old system, but given it’s not defined properly and it’s not part of an agreement, it could be challenged. The World Motor Sport Council decisions have gone ahead today based on good faith and good spirit within the teams and I hope that continues, but of course we really do need a firmer and stronger structure around future regulations and how they are decided upon. There is a framework which has been broadly agreed but it’s not strictly in place at the moment and I think that’s something that we do need to work towards as soon as we can.

    Q: (Gary Meenaghan – The National) Christian, going back to the vacant seat you will soon have, if you chose to go for a driver that isn’t currently racing with Toro Rosso, what does that say about your sister team and the success of your sister team, given its purpose is to blood stars of the future?

    CH: Well, the whole purpose of that team is obviously to give young drivers within the Red Bull Junior programme the opportunity, but there’s no prerequisite that they have to end up in a Red Bull Racing seat. They have to earn that on merit. They have the opportunity, they’re both there in the Toro Rosso on merit, through what they’ve achieved in the lower categories. They’ve both had excellent junior careers and they’re both in a learning phase, as they’ve come into Formula One and both are exciting prospects for the future. The fundamental question is is one of them ready? That’s something that we will have to look at and contemplate quite carefully but they certainly both merit their place in Formula One and Toro Rosso does an excellent job in developing those young drivers. Sebastian Vettel is obviously the most successful graduate from Toro Rosso and the current two drivers are both exciting prospects.

    Q: Final thought on that: what’s your time frame?

    CH: Some time before Melbourne, I would have thought. No, I would have thought later in the summer. We’re not going to let it drag on forever but we can take a bit of time to make sure we make the most informed decision that we can.

    Ends

  • Mark Webber to retire from F1 this season

    Silverstone, 27 June 2013: F1 personnel arrived at Silverstone on Thursday morning to be greeted with the news that Mark Webber is to retire from the sport at the end of the season. Webber, winner of nine grand prix, will race for Porsche in 2014 as the German manufacture embarks on a new LMP1 programme in the World Endurance Championship.

    “I’m very excited about my new chapter and the new challenge ahead,” said Webber, speaking to a packed audience in the FIA Thursday press conference at Silverstone. “[Porsche is] one of the most famous and well-respected brands in automotive and motor racing, so that’s something which personally I’m very satisfied about taking on.”

    The departure of Webber has been mooted for some time with rumours of a move back into sports cars first suggested at the beginning of the year. The Australian today confirmed he made his decision some time ago – though the announcement took most at Red Bull by surprise.

    Webber explained that, rather than it being his decision to make announce his retirement at the circuit where he has enjoyed the most success, the timing of the statement was chosen by his future employers. “It was a Porsche announcement,” he confirmed. “I informed Christian [Horner, Red Bull Racing team principal] before the announcement, which contractually I should do.

    “Obviously I will talk the [Red Bull Racing] factory at some stage. They’ve been superb for me on the floor there but Porsche were very keen to make the announcement. It was about Porsche and Mark Webber today.”

    Coming back to the 2013 season, Webber vowed that his level of commitment remains unaffected. “It doesn’t change a huge amount to be honest,” he said. “I’ve known for quite a while, I’ve had a plan and I’ve stuck to it but in the meantime I’m focused on achieving very, very strong results in my last season in Formula One. I’m fully respectful of the effort that goes in to get the car out there, so I need to keep pushing, for myself and for the team.”

    ends

  • We will try to be in front of McLaren: Paul Di Resta

    2013 British Grand Prix
    Thursday Press Conference Transcript

    Drivers – Fernando ALONSO (Ferrari), Jenson BUTTON (McLaren) Max CHILTON (Marussia), Lewis HAMILTON (Mercedes), Paul DI RESTA (Force India), Mark WEBBER (Red Bull).

    PRESS CONFERENCE

    Q: Max, your first home grand prix, what are your thoughts coming up to this?

    Max CHILTON: It’s an extremely exciting moment. To be racing in Formula One is amazing. In Australia, that grand prix was very special but this is the one I’ve been waiting for. To be in front of the home crowd, all the Union Jacks around the circuit. It’s going to be a moment not to forget. The main thing is to keep doing what you always do, not do anything different and just try to do the best that you can do.

    Q: How do you think your progress has been so far this year? We’re at round eight, you seem to be making quiet progress back there.

    MC: Yeah, I’m confident of how we’ve done. I’m finished all seven races and had a great race in Monaco finishing 14th. You’ve got to learn as much as you can in your first year of Formula One. I’ve felt like I’ve learnt everything that I can and I’ve learnt everything from every race and taken it into the next race. I’ll be doing that for all of the year and maybe next year – I don’t know what the plan is. You’ve got to take in as much as you can and try to take that into the next race and get a better result.

    Q: Mark, a two-time winner here. What are the chances of another?

    Mark WEBBER: It’s been a happy hunting ground around here, in Formula One and also, years before that in the junior categories. I think it’s one of the best circuits on the calendar. All the drivers love driving here. A Formula One car on the limit, all the quick corners. And yeah, the Red Bull car in the last few years has also been pretty strong here, so we’re looking forward to certainly challenging for another victory. Qualifying also, the last five years I’ve been in the top three here, so yeah, that’s been a good platform to launch a good result off. So, we need to have a smooth weekend and yeah, challenge for the last part of the grand prix. I think again tyres will be playing a very big role – as they always have done the last few years around here. Fernando was strong in Shanghai and in Barcelona – similar types of layout – so we need to be mindful of that, not that we can do much about it but we know we’re going to have some opposition this weekend, and looking forward to it.

    Q: And a momentous announcement from you today. Tell us the thinking behind the announcement of your retirement from Formula One. And how significant is the year, 2013 to 2014?

    MW: Well, the timing is perfect for me. Very, very excited about my new chapter and the new challenge ahead. One of the most famous and most well-respected brands in automotive and motor racing in Porsche, so that’s something which personally I’m very satisfied about taking on. The decision has been there for quite a long time for me actually. So, I’ve known for quite a while, I’ve had a plan and I’ve stuck to it. But still, in the meantime, respecting the profession that I have now at this level and focusing on achieving very, very strong results in my last season in Formula One.

    Q: Was it the new engine regs? Did that have anything to do with it?

    MW: There’s lots of reasons that come into the pot, I think, when any sportsman or women comes to that time in their career where they want to call it a day. That’s another small ingredient: there’s going to be big, big changes in this sport next year, so I may as well go and do those big, big changes where my future is going to be. Let’s see how the category is next year in Formula One – I’ll be interested to watch every now and then and go from there. Watch these guys do their stuff.

    Q: Jenson, Fernando, you’ve raced against Mark for many, many years. What are your thoughts about the announcement today?

    Jenson BUTTON: It leaves the seat free for someone else, doesn’t it? It’s not really a surprise. I think Mark’s career’s been a little bit similar to mine in a way in terms of struggling in the first few years to find a seat and a drive that you think you deserve and then being with a team that can give you victories. It’s obviously the right time so fair play to him.

    Fernando?

    Fernando ALONSO: Yeah, I think it’s a good time for him, good opportunity. As Mark said, he’s moving to a very prestigious car brand and probably the most famous race in the world – together with Formula One. I think he’ll have a lot of fun behind the wheel, as he’s doing now, with a little bit of less problems outside the wheel that we have now in Formula One. We enjoy 19 Sundays a year and the rest of the time is a little bit of a stressful time. With the new series I think he will have a little bit more fun and I wish him the best of luck for the rest of the championship and for the future.

    Coming to your own thoughts about these two races, this race and a week’s time in Germany, how important are these two races for your championship hopes, given the deficit that exists at the moment?

    FA: All races are important from now on, especially in the position we are in. 36 points behind the leader, we don’t have much more room to do mistakes or lose many more points. But, on the other side, we need to remain calm, we need to do our job, the maximum we can every weekend. If we can win the race, if we can finish in front of Sebastian, will be great. If we cannot do it, we will try to lose the minimum points. Last year after Monza I think I have an advantage of around 40 points [39] over Sebastian and it was not enough – and that was Monza time. So now being in the race for the championship 36 points behind. It’s not the ideal position but it’s not the end of the world.

    Q: The car was on pole position here last year, you finished second. How well is this car suited to Silverstone?

    FA: We’ll see. I think it should be a good circuit for us. We’ve been more or less competitive here for the last three or four years. As Mark said before also, it is the first circuit that is a little bit similar to China and Barcelona – the best circuits so far for this year’s car and we have some high hopes for this weekend. On the other hand, Red Bull has been quite strong, and dominant here from 2009 so it will be an extremely close and challenging weekend with Mercedes I’m sure very, very strong as well, as they proved in China and in Barcelona with the first row in qualifying etcetera. So, y’know, interesting weekend ahead of us but we approach it with confidence, knowing that we have a good opportunity.

    Q: Jenson, it’s an unfortunate statistic that you haven’t been on the podium here since 1999. Is it just an unfortunate statistic? Are you just unlucky here? What is it about Silverstone?

    JB: I’m sure there’s more to it than just being unlucky, I’m sure it is. I’ve still had some really good races here. My first year in Formula One, my British Grand Prix I finished fifth, overtaking Michael at turn one and finished with nine cylinders and still finished fifth, so it was a great weekend, with DC winning. Very passionate fans here so it was a great celebration. But yeah, I agree, being on the podium here is something I would love to achieve. It’s going to be very difficult this year but we’ll see. We’ll fight as hard as we can and get the best out of the car hopefully. And that’s all we can do this weekend: we know we’re not quick enough but you want to repay the fans for all their support. They’re not just fans in the good times, they’re fans in the tough times as well. That’s really nice to see. Hopefully we’ll have a full house of Union Jacks here and I promise we’ll do the best we can.

    Q: We know you’ve got a difficult car this year. What can you do to help its progress?

    JB: I think everyone knows, when you watch on TV, our car does certain things a Formula One car shouldn’t really be doing. I think our ride is an area we need to improve and an area we are improving. So, with a circuit like Silverstone, it is reasonably bumpy. It’s not quite like Canada, and I think our car does suit circuits like Barcelona, like China, Malaysia. So, hopefully the flow of this circuit will help us – but still that’s not enough. We need to improve in the areas where we are weak. We’re not thinking about 2014 already, we want to get good results this year so we’re pushing flat out to make sure we do improve – but it’s an area of the car that’s also very difficult to improve. But we’re trying very hard.

    Q: Paul, you’ve had two really good races – the last two races in Monaco and Canada – from low on the grid. So what are your feelings about those two grands prix?

    Paul DI RESTA: Obviously coming away with good results, I think, fighting back. Canada was obviously an excellent result. I think everybody raised their game for Sunday and what we achieved was quite remarkable. This weekend, three more straightforward days I think will definitely be on the cards. To build upon that, to move forward really and to finish in the points. We’ve managed to score on six occasions this year, the other one, where we didn’t score was a DNF. If we can keep that up, and equally try and battle with McLaren, hopefully be in front of them, it makes a big difference to a team like us that’s battling in the midfield most of the year.

    Q: You’ve had two good qualifyings in your two grands prix here. As you say, it’s a matter of three days going correctly is it? Getting everything in place?

    PdR: Canada was very difficult. I think the whole team felt the pain of that but I think here we’ll look to gather some data, starting on the tyres tomorrow. Our car seems to be working well in all circumstances this year. It seems very consistent. I think this is a track where tyres are going to be a question. We’re normally on the healthier side of tyre wear and really the focus should be on qualifying because that’s the big result of the weekend, and then transfer that into the race where we know we’ve got a strong package to gain some positions from. But it’s a long way away and a lot of work to do in front of hopefully some great British support.

    Q: Lewis, are you a bit surprised that you come here at the British driver with the best chance of winning and best placed in the Championship?

    Lewis HAMILTON: I guess so, yeah. I was definitely not expecting that when we started the season. But it’s I guess a positive.

    Q: What are your thoughts on the progress Mercedes have made this year?

    LH: I think it’s incredible what they’ve been able to do, it’s very difficult. Watching my previous car evolve over time, over the last few years just to see how much improvement you can make over a winter. To see what they’ve done is pretty impressive. They’ve done an incredible job but it’s because they’ve got a great group of guys. They’ve got some very intelligent people coming up with great ideas and new innovations. It’s a team to be reckoned with.

    QUESTIONS FROM THE FLOOR

    Q: (Alex Popov – RTR) Mark, you will be missed and I don’t think I’m alone in thinking this. How much will your approach change for the remaining races?

    MW: I think going forward, for the rest of the season, it doesn’t change a huge amount to be honest, because I’ve known the decision… nothing changes for my approach now because obviously it’s now out for everybody, but in terms of the last few races, obviously challenging for the top steps and when you get everything right, obviously we want to get wins as well. I don’t see that being a huge huge difference. It’s in my interest to keep the motivation up until Brazil and work hard with the guys. That’s important. At this level, I’m fully respectful of the effort that goes in to get the car out there, so I need to keep pushing, for myself and for the team because they put in a lot of work, obviously, at the factory at Milton Keynes, Renault, everyone.

    Q: (Alex Popov – RTR) Mark, during your first career at Le Mans, we remember a couple of crashes.

    MW: Le Mans, yeah, in 1999, that era, those cars were very very… I think the regulations were quite dangerous. We had a lot of cars having some big shunts in that era. I think all manufacturers had issues with keeping the cars on the ground, just because of the way the regs were written and they were quite quick. Look, motor racing is dangerous, I accept that, we all know that. Motor racing is dangerous. Le Mans is a classic race. The cars are not slow there now but I’m not a guy who wants to wrap myself in cotton wool either. I’m looking forward to the challenge and yeah, it’s something which was in my thinking in terms of the safety factors, all those things which have improved since we were there last and they will continue to improve as well, not just the circuit but the cars. We’ve gone forward since 13 years ago.

    Q: (Bob McKenzie – Daily Express) Mark, why did you chose to go that route of announcing it this morning on Twitter before you told the team?

    MW: Well, it was a Porsche announcement. I informed Christian before the announcement which contractually I should do, so that’s what we did.

    Q: (Bob McKenzie – Daily Express) It was just the guys in the factory didn’t know.

    MW: Well, it wouldn’t have been an announcement then, would it? So you’ve got to get the balance right. Obviously I will talk to the factory of course at some stage. They’ve been superb for me on the floor there but Porsche were very keen to make the announcement. It was about Porsche and Mark Webber today.

    Q: (Bob McKenzie – Daily Express) It wasn’t about scoring a point back at Red Bull over things that had happened over the years?

    MW: No. I think I helped the team today. They know they’ve got to make some decisions in the future. Dietrich (Mateschitz) has been completely up to speed with my thinking in the last six to eight months, so Dietrich has been absolutely on board and on message with where I’ve been at. He’s certainly encouraged me not to rush my decision when I approached him earlier in the season. I think basically all of the right channels and avenues that we went through to get the message across as subtly as we could in terms of the announcement was done in the right way.

    Q: (Jens Wolters – ARD Radio) Mark, do you actually care about the next guy who succeeds you in your position at Red Bull and maybe what should he bring into the team?

    MW: I’ll watch with interest, mate. Yeah.

    Q: (Rosie Baillie – F1Plus.com) You’ve spent many years in Formula One, Mark, what will you miss most about Formula One when you leave?

    MW: Probably being with some of these guys to be honest. We all strive to get to the pinnacle, and I’ve been with JB, Lewis, Fernando, these guys for a long time, racing. We all know where we’ve come from. I’m very proud of where I’ve come from. I don’t forget the street that I grew up in in Australia. Formula One is seen as the pinnacle. Working with people like Adrian Newey, there’s things like that which of course won’t go un-noticed but as any sportsman or woman will know, you’re not 25 for ever so you’ve got to get the decision right and the timing right and stopping when you’re still performing well. I believe that’s  absolutely correct for yourself and that’s part of the course that I will miss. The drug on the grid when the guys walk away from the car, that’s the best legal drug you can get. I’m ready to go racing so that’s brilliant. Like I say, you’ve got to be real with yourself and know there’s a day where you need to roll on to the next chapter and that’s what I’m very excited by. You can’t kid yourself and say it’s going to go on for ever. Yeah, and your performance is important so… yeah.

    Q: (Livio Oricchio – O Estado de Sao Paulo) Lewis, in Monaco you didn’t have great tyre degradation and also in Montreal. OK, they are circuits that are not demanding in terms of tyre wear. Here it is. If you don’t face this kind of problem, do you think people will relate that to the test that your team did after the Spanish Grand Prix?

    LH: Probably. That’s something we will have to face up to but I’m not really expecting us to have an easy weekend. I don’t think we’ve really made a huge step since Barcelona. The last couple of races have been a little bit easier on the tyres so we’ve definitely made a small improvement but I don’t know whether it’s going to be good enough this weekend to come out ahead of the Red Bulls and the  Ferraris but time will tell. We definitely have some components that we’ve developed since Barcelona to help with the tyres, so I’m hoping that they will help this weekend.

    Q: (Kate Walker – GP Week) A question for everyone except Mark: if and when the time comes for you guys to move on and to retire, are there any series that you find particularly appealing? Anyone want to try their hand at NASCAR, motocross? What gets you guys excited as future possibilities?

    LH: I don’t know. I haven’t any plans for leaving for a while. I’ve not really thought about it. I love quite a lot of the different sports that are out there but I don’t know whether I would consider doing any other sports after Formula One. This is the pinnacle of motor racing and I think that for me personally, anything after this would be a little bit boring for me.

    FA: I don’t know. I will think when I arrive at the time.

    JB: Yeah, I haven’t thought about it a lot to be fair. Categories that I would like would be… I think Le Mans is a very special race, a very big team race, big team effort. I also like Super GT in Japan. I think that’s a good category with the new regs that they have it looks pretty exciting.

    Q: Paul, you’ve been in DTM, would you go back?

    PdiR: Yeah, I had some great memories there. I don’t know. Hopefully my journey has only just started here. It’s a few years away. There might be new series by that point.

    MC: I’ve planned to get success in Formula One first. I’ve done a Le Mans race before and loved every moment of it so I might go down that route and maybe go on to touring cars after that because I started – after karts – in a thing called a T-car so I’m used to the weight transfer. It was quite nice to drift a car without doing stupid speeds but I’ll think of that when I’ve gone through my twenties.

    Q: (Graham Keilloh – F1Plus.com) Fernando, do you have any thoughts on this being the first race weekend after the sad passing of Jose Froilan Gonzales?

    FA: Well, obviously it’s sad week and a sad news for all the Ferrari family and for the motor sport family. I remember two years ago when we won the race here, I spoke with him on the telephone after the podium ceremony because it was a very special day for Ferrari and we dedicated the victory that day to he who is a legend at Ferrari. Obviously this weekend it’s important if we could do a good job to dedicate again to all his family and all the passion and the fans that he brought into Formula One from his country and we would like to do a good job for him and for all the Ferrari fans.

    Q: (Michelle Foster – PlanetF1.com) Mark, will you be walking away with any regrets?

    MW: No, no I don’t think so. At this level, you’re always open to some adversity here and there and challenges, that’s how this sport is, any top flight sport is going to be snapshots of different things which you could probably have done better here and there, but there’s no career which is like this. You’re going to have ups and downs and getting off the canvas is part of the rules, so I’ve been very fortunate to have some very very special memories for sure. How long is a piece of string? You could have more in terms of  championships or whatever, but 2010 was a very very big battle with lots of quality drivers and it went to the last race so of course I remember that, I led the championship at the wrong race but it was… I’m looking back with very fond memories and I’ve still got races to go obviously this year so still looking to add to those great memories and helping Red Bull still achieve very very good results.

    Q: (Jens Wolters – ARD Radio) Lewis, for me it’s seem like since the decision in Paris that you and your team are the new bad guys in Formula One. Do you feel that? Do the other drivers still talk to you, how do you feel after this decision?

    LH: So far, everyone still seems to be speaking to us. I feel that it’s one of those experiences that we’ve gone through that if anything it’s made us stronger. It’s been quite encouraging to see how the team has pulled together and how they’ve turned a negative into a positive and now moving forward and hungrier than ever to win, so that’s encouraging for me, that brings me great energy to come here with and hoping that we can get some good results moving forward.

    Q: (Michael Casey – Associated Press) Lewis, talking more about this weekend, you had a good race in Canada. You’re obviously still in the hunt. How are you feeling about the prospects for a title this season, even with the tyre issues?

    LH: Yeah, like Fernando was saying, we’re even further behind Sebastian and it’s quite a big deficit so to catch that up, it’s going to be very difficult, especially with the pace that they have, but we’re not giving up, we’re going to keep pushing  and we’ll just push as hard as we can until the last race and the last opportunity we have. But I feel positive, we’re there or thereabouts and we’re trying to make improvements. Those guys are extremely quick, Ferrari and Red Bull but it’s not impossible to catch them, at least that’s what we believe so we are going to keep pushing.

    Q: (Gary Meenaghan – The National) Jenson and Mark, Williams are celebrating their 600th race this weekend, I was just hoping you could talk about how impressive a feat that actually is.

    JB: Why, because I’ve done so many races as well, you mean? Yeah, Frank and Patrick are both legends. I raced for them in 2000, they gave me the opportunity to race in Formula One. I’ve got great memories with them and with the whole team as I’m sure Mark does as well. It’s an amazing achievement, it’s not a manufacturer, it’s a true racing team and that’s what I love about it, how difficult it was for them to find the money in the first place, to go racing, but with belief and determination, he’s achieved or the team has achieved so much in their career. 600 Grands Prix, wow, it really is phenomenal. Fair play and hopefully they will be here for many many more years.

    MW: Yeah, I agree with JB. I think it’s an incredible achievement, under the sensational beacon that Frank has been. Obviously the adversity he has personally been through to still be in the factory week in week out are pretty much known. When I was there he was doing six days a week, he was very excited when he saw you arrive at the factory on a Saturday for whatever reason, even if it was for nothing, just to say hallo, he was excited to have you there. An amazing guy for the sport so under him, as Jenson said, the team has been a real force, mainly remembered for being towards the front of the grid obviously in those Canon Honda days and they were obviously the eras when I was watching the racing as well, but I think moving forward, obviously Frank’s slowly handing the reins over a little bit now and of course I wish Claire (Williams) all the best and the rest of the team. Claire is a super operator, really down to earth and a bit of a tough cookie as well, so she’s got some of the traits of Dad. I hope they have good success in the future.

    Q: (Luigi Perna – La Gazzetta dello Sport) Fernando, last year, during the summer, Ferrari made a big improvement in its performance. Are you confident you can do the same this year in order to close the gap, or is it more difficult?

    FA: I think we will see. This year we are a little bit dominated by the tyres’ performance and the tyre issues that we face every weekend. Some weekends are hit by some tyres against the others but it seems that if you have a weekend where you make the tyre work properly and last properly throughout the race you have a better chance to win, so despite the performance of the car in the high speed corners or low speed corners, I think it will be a weekend over the next couple of races to make the tyres work in the maximum performance in qualifying and in the race, because sometimes you hit one of the two and it’s not enough so we need to improve in that aspect. I think the team performance needs to be a little bit better in the tyre preparation on Saturday and Sunday

    Q: (Michael Casey – Associated Press) Fernando and Lewis, in terms of Sebastian after the race he had in Canada, is there a little bit of a sense that he’s starting to pull away, that a fourth title could be his at some point?

    FA: I think he’s doing a fantastic job. I think he’s been nearly perfect in all the races with no negative races, always performing well in qualifying and doing very good races. Obviously I had two unlucky situations, one in Malaysia, one in Bahrain. Kimi was leading the championship or very close until he had two unlucky situations, one in Monaco and in Canada was a little bit of a mixed race for him. So we need to keep fighting, we need to keep pushing and we need to recover from these bad races that we had now. As Lewis said before, I think Red Bull is performing really well, it’s improving compared to the first part of the championship, so we really need to raise our game if we want to catch Sebastian because he’s doing a fantastic job.

    LH: Yeah, same as what Fernando said: Sebastian’s doing an incredible job. He’s performing as the World Champion that he is and they will be difficult to catch but I don’t think it’s impossible to close the gap. From our side, we’ve already closed quite a huge deficit already so we’re happy where we are but of course we want to do better. Fernando’s a lot closer. I think once they sort out their qualifying they’ll be able to match the Red Bulls if not beat them so we need to do a lot more work.

    Ends

  • I made up for the lapse 2 years back: Vettel

    DRIVERS

    1 – Sebastian VETTEL (Red Bull Racing)

    2 – Fernando ALONSO (Ferrari)

    3 – Lewis HAMILTON (Mercedes)

    PODIUM INTERVIEW  (Conducted by Eddie Jordan)

    Q: [to Vettel] Three World Champions, I’m spoilt for choice here. What a great win, a text book win, pole position, you seemed to win it at ease. Tell me about it.

    Sebastian VETTEL: Thank you. Thank you everybody. I think it wasn’t that bad for us, I think. Yeah, great race, I had a very good start, which was important and then I was able to really go with the car and yeah, obviously on the supersoft we saw the tyres were falling apart but I think we were just as good as everybody else. I was able to build a gap and then kept that gap basically the whole race. At some stages we had a full pitstop on hand and it’s a little bit easier then to control the race, control the gaps etcetera. Great race, great job by the team. I had perfect pitstops even though we had some time on hand. And also for North America, I think it’s a great race for Infiniti. All in all, a very important race for us to win. Finally we get it off the list. Very proud of that. The sun came out today. Couldn’t get any better. Racing in front of the crowd here is always…

    Q: …I have to ask you about that because it seems quite unbelievable to us that you’ve never won here before, nor indeed has Red Bull. So what does it mean to get the monkey off the back?

    SV: Yeah, obviously we’ve had good races before but it didn’t come together to win. Two years ago I was very close. I lost it in the last lap, it was my mistake, so made up for it today. Great feeling, as I said. Great car today by the team and I think we were able to really pull away from the rest of the field, which was most important to then control the race. I could really enjoy every single lap. Difficult at stages through the traffic but as I said, great and …

    Q [to Alonso] …When I read your report yesterday when you said that you thought you may have a chance to come from sixth position to hopefully get a win here, I was saying ‘how’s he going to try and do that?’ And you nearly did it. Magic, magic tenacious drive.

    Fernando ALONSO: Hello everybody first of all and bonjour. Yesterday obviously we didn’t have a good qualifying, I didn’t put the lap together and also the conditions didn’t help but we knew that the pace in dry conditions of the car on Friday was good, so we had some hopes. Obviously we are fighting with top drivers and I have a very good fight with Mark, with Nico, with Lewis at the end. And it’s not easy. Even if you have a little bit more pace, they are super-talented ones and it was difficult race. But at the end I think the second place has a victory taste because we scored some good points after a very difficult weekend.

    Q: You seem to have a lot of fans here Lewis.

    Lewis HAMILTON: I have a great time here every year, and thank you for all the support, I have a great time.

    Q: I’ve got to ask you, we all were enthralled how clean, how correct and yet how exciting the fight was with Fernando. What did you damage on the car?

    LH: I think some small part of my wing came off. It was very, very close, we had a good battle, he was very, very fair and I hope we can get a bit quicker in the next race.

    Q: You qualified in front of your team-mate, you raced in front of your team-mate. That must have been a bit of a help after Monaco, I presume. You feel really good about going forward with this team?

    LH. Yes, the car’s getting better and the guys are doing a fantastic job, so we just need to keep pushing to close the gaps to these guys.

    PRESS CONFERENCE

    Well done Sebastian that must be, not a relief necessarily, but you must be very happy first of all to have won here finally and for Red Bull Racing as well. But there were a couple of moments where you very nearly touched the wall and you went wide as well. What happened in those two instances?

    SV: Obviously I was pushing very hard at the beginning to get away and open a gap and yeah, I think it’s Canada, you obviously go close to the walls here or there, sometimes a little bit closer than I wanted but fortunately I didn’t brush the walls. I’m really just trying to just open as much of a gap as I can. I felt I had more pace in the beginning of the race, it’s difficult to foresee what’s happening later on, when you swap tyres, also in terms of range – how far we were going to get on each set of tyres. We weren’t sure if it was a one-stop or a two-stop. So all these things you don’t know so it’s good to have a little bit of time on your hands, which was the reason why I pushed very hard in the beginning. Obviously it was clear quickly after the first stint that we had a good gap and controlled it. Obviously it was difficult with the traffic etc, but I think we had a great car and we always had enough pace on hand to react and control the gap. In the end I went straight in turn one. I think I could have saved or caught the car, but I didn’t want to risk a spin. So I decided, should I stay should I go, then I decided to cut the corner, slowed down. Obviously there was traffic again with a backmarker, so I let him by to really make sure I rejoined the track in a safe way, which cost a lot of time. But yeah I was just a bit too late in the first corner heating the brakes.

    Well done. Fernando, you had some great battles and it took quite a while to get past Lewis. Was it just the speed coming out of the hairpin? It took quite a while, even with DRS.

    FA: I think it was the pace difference was very, very small. With other battles we did maybe I was a little bit more fast, a little bit faster than the people I was catching. With Lewis we were really very close on the pace and there was some moments going out of turn eight to see who had the detection point and then in turn 10 the same thing, at the last chicane, so there was some action there. But it was nice to have these battles, particularly this race with so talented drivers, so intelligent drivers, that, you know, you fight wheel-to-wheel at 315km/h and you feel safe. You feel you are racing and you are competing. It can go your way or it can go the other way, but this is real racing. So, very happy to see this back after Monaco. It’s a little bit different.

    Lewis, once again on the podium here in Canada. We thought you might be trying to get Fernando back again. Was that a possibility?

    LH: Clearly not, because I didn’t get him. He was massively quick and it was very difficult to keep him behind. I tried my best. I got close once he got past me, but he was just generally took quick for me. But you know, it’s still a good result for me considering that these guys are massively quick.

    QUESTIONS FROM THE FLOOR

    Q: (Dan Knutson – Auto Action and National Speedsport News) Lewis, earlier this week you talked to us about your brakes. How were they in this race, maybe the best they’ve been all season?

    LH: No. Not really. Generally, again, very similar to other races. Still need to improve and that’s where Fernando was really catching me everywhere.

    Q: (Paolo Ianieri – La Gazzetta dello Sport) Fernando, how much has yesterday’s qualifying been hurting you because starting sixth getting to second was a big race.  Could you have done better, do you think, if you had started on the first or second row?

    FA: I don’t know really. I think you will never know. Qualifying is qualifying and it’s better to be on pole position but I think the last pole position in dry conditions was September 2010 so it’s not the strong point of the team. On Sunday, we normally pick up the pace a little bit about which we are happy because the points are gained on Sunday, but it’s true that at some races, if you start too far behind, it’s difficult to recover, but we will try to improve next time.

    Q: (Kate Walker – GP Week) Sebastian, you had a dominant victory today. You’ve won three of seven races so far this season and you’re leading both Drivers’ and Constructors’ championships, but despite all this, you’ve probably been the most vocal critic of the tyres. I was wondering if you had revised your opinions on the rubber, given your performance and your continuing strength.

    SV: Well, I think it’s pretty simple. The criticism we had or I expressed was not based on performance. I think it was based on safety and I’m sure if you ask other drivers, maybe they weren’t that strong in the press, maybe they think they have an advantage with this sort of tyre, but we had some occasions this year where the tyre suffered delaminating, the top layer came off for not exactly known reasons, probably debris but you will always have some pieces on the track. I think it’s not possible to have an entirely clean track everywhere and I think that has been the criteria. Every time I complained about balance or the tyres and their behaviour, every time as I said as well that on that day there were other people doing a better job and first of all we had to get to their level to start complaining about performance but obviously when you say something, it’s in fashion, these days to take what you like instead of probably publishing the whole answer.

    Q: (Nicolangelo Cioppi– Cittadino Canadese) Sebastian, what happened again on lap 52, I don’t understand exactly?

    SV: As I said, I was a little bit too late into the first corner, lost the rear on the way in. I could have stayed on the track but I wasn’t sure. It was quite tight, obviously you have the right hander following immediately and I didn’t want to risk a spin so I decided to cut and make sure. I lost four or five seconds in that corner compared to normal, so I think it was fine. It just seemed to be the safer option to avoid the spin and carry on that way. I was just a little bit too fast. That’s what happens. Fortunately there was no wall so I was lucky.

    Q: (Nicolangelo Cioppi– Cittadino Canadese) Fernando, in Monte Carlo we talked to one another and you were very confident for Montreal, and you said to me ‘I’m going to be on the podium.’  Congratulations, and I would like you to say something to the Italian community here because there’s a very very big Italian community.

    FA: In Monaco we were not competitive for different reasons. In a way, we were not competitive here on Saturday, maybe for the same reasons, for the conditions that we need to do a better job compared to the others. In some conditions we are not competitive enough, so we need to work on that. And then for the Italian people here in Montreal, I think they support Ferrari all the time, they enjoy Formula One. You see the atmosphere in this race is very very unique, not only here on the track but from the time you land at the airport, you see a very enthusiastic people about this race. You put the TV on, they are talking about the meteo for the Grand Prix. They’re talking about the qualifying, the practice, the shops on the streets are full of flags, Ferrari flags etc, so it’s very nice to race here. We didn’t give them a win today but I think we put on a good show for everybody and hopefully we give a win for them in the next one when they are watching TV.

    Q: (Carlos Miguel Gomez – La Gaceta) Fernando, are you worried for the British Grand Prix, with your pace in qualifying because normally it’s cold weather; do you believe you can be OK in Silverstone?

    FA: I believe so. I think it’s a different circuit, completely different asphalt, generating a lot of stress in the tyre: Silverstone, Nurburgring compared with very easy tracks on tyres like Monaco, Canada where you are looking for one or two stops. Silverstone will be different, I think. We know that the temperature is not helping us at the moment, but we cannot say anything because there are other people going very fast in those conditions, so it’s up to us to improve. We have some ideas and hopefully at Silverstone we can improve on that.

    Q: (Bill Beacon – Canadian Press) Sebastian, after you took the chequered flag, you sounded that you were very pleased to finally win in Montreal. Was that important to you and the team?

    SV: Yeah, I think it is important to us, but not because… I wasn’t desperate to win here. I think we’ve had strong results in the past and I wasn’t ashamed coming here having not won this race, so I wasn’t desperate when I got up this morning and thought ‘I have to win, I have to win.’ But I was very pleased because it’s a very nice race. I think Lewis had the privilege to win here three times and I think that in terms of atmosphere – Fernando touched on it – the whole city enjoys the Formula One Grand Prix. We have a lot of spectators. I think it was good today to have sunshine, it was quite bad in terms of weather yesterday, but there were still a lot of fans and obviously today, again, a fantastic atmosphere and to me this race belongs one hundred percent to the calendar, because I think for all of us drivers we enjoy a lot seeing grandstands completely sold out, a lot of enthusiastic people, the whole town living the Grand Prix. I think it’s similar to the Grand Prix in Melbourne in a way which is also not a race track, it’s in the middle of the city as well, so I think we enjoy that, and I think that’s why we were very happy or we are very happy today.

    Q: (Jeff Pappone – Globe and Mail) Fernando, when do things started getting desperate? Seb seems to be gaining points at every race now and you’re falling further and further behind. When do you really have to start winning?

    FA: I think we are eighty or eight-five points behind. It will be a very critical situation, which is more than three races. In the past –  I touched on this in Australia or Malaysia – in the last six or eight years, there were people recovering from more than 30 points on the old points, which is three races so it’s 75 or 80 points. So hopefully we’re going to arrive to that number.

    Q: (Jordan Irvine – NextGen Auto) Lewis, Mercedes dominated second position for 63 laps of today’s 70 lap race and then you lost out with seven to go to Fernando. Was there any one thing that you didn’t have that meant to you lost that position with so little time left?

    LH: I guess it’s just grip, just lack of grip. The car was fantastic, I’m assuming those guys had even better than that. But generally it’s been really good. I was just lacking a little bit of grip in the lower speed… perhaps the chicane. Fernando seemed to be particularly quick in the lower speed corners.

    Q: (Massimo Lopes Pegna– La Gazzetta dello Sport) Sebastian, how important is this win today; beside the win, how important is to gain seven points in the standings and maybe to get quicker to the critical point that Fernando was talking about?

    SV: To be honest with you, I care for the win today. Obviously you don’t have to be a genius to know that you get more points than anybody else for that result but as Fernando said, the championship is still long and obviously I was in a different position last year at this time and I was able to catch up quite a lot towards the end. I had very strong races. Fernando was a little bit unlucky here and there and we were able to beat him, so we were able to come back but this was ten races from where we are now so I think there are so many things that can happen at that stage of the championship, I’m happy to stand on the grid and focus on the race, trying to win, and the rest we will see later on if we are still in a strong position. I think there’s enough of you reminding us if we’re not, you are there as well.

    Q: (Livio Oricchio – O Estado de Sao Paulo) Lewis, OK, the last two circuits were not demanding in terms of tyre wear. It looked like Mercedes made a step forward in terms of the tyre wear, that was the weakest point you had. Can you explain this development you’ve made on the car, what happened exactly to make this step forward?

    LH: I think it’s just been a work in progress. We haven’t really… we haven’t cured anything, it’s not been a long period of time since Barcelona where there was big trouble. I guess we’ve just been to two tracks where it’s not got high speed corners, so therefore it’s not really been a problem. We’ve worked on a couple of techniques to look after the tyres a bit more, brake cooling and all that kind of stuff has been added as well, which helps.

    Ends

  • Vettel on pole; Hamilton second

    8 June 2013 (IST Sat Morn) FIA Saturday Press Coference

    (DRIVERS

    1 – Sebastian VETTEL (Red Bull Racing)

    2 – Lewis HAMILTON (Mercedes)

    3 – Valtteri BOTTAS (Williams)

    TV UNILATERAL

    Q: Sebastian, you seemed to be on top of those extraordinary conditions all the way through qualifying. Was that the case?

    Sebastian VETTEL: Well it was very, very tricky, especially because you never knew what the conditions were like the next time you were out. So obviously it was intermediate tyres throughout but extremely tricky to adapt, especially in the last qualifying section. We decided to have two runs, we thought the second run will be quicker because we had a new set of tyres left but it started to drizzle, in the last sector in particular, in the last chicane. I went straight on one lap and then the second lap I had a mistake somewhere else, so it turned out that the conditions were best for the first run.  So that was a bit of a surprise because obviously you target on a set of new tyres to push a little bit harder. Very happy the first lap was good enough. It was very tight with Lewis. I think at the end everybody was improving in the first two sectors but then the last one was… yeah, those last two corners didn’t allow anyone to go quicker, which surely I didn’t mind but I think it was showing how difficult the whole qualifying session was for everyone. Congratulations to Valtteri, I think he did an extraordinary job putting the Williams on P3 but for us, extremely happy with the result and looking forward to the race tomorrow. I think we had strong pace yesterday so no matter the conditions, we should be in decent shape.

    Q: Lewis, is that what cost you right at the end? Was that the rain in the final sector?

    Lewis HAMILTON: I don’t know really… no, I was doing a pretty good lap, I think I was six or seven tenths up, even so I went wide. I don’t know whether I would have kept it but all I needed to keep was a tenth or so, a bit unfortunate – but I’m still happy to be here for the team.

    Q: Valtteri, congratulations. What does this mean, to be in the top three?

    Valtteri BOTTAS: Thank you. Of course it means a lot. It’s way more up in the grid than what we really could ever imagine. It’s been so difficult, the first six races for us and it will be a nice boost for the team. We really got everything quite right today.

    Q: Sebastian, as you say, no points today. What chances tomorrow? As you said, you don’t really fear any of the conditions. Are you worried about rain or not?

    SV: Well, I don’t know if there’s anybody who can give a precise forecast for every corner. As we saw today, it was really tricky in some places, then drier than expected in other places and the next lap was completely different. So, yeah, a bit difficult to foresee how the weather is behaving tomorrow – but the forecast, I think, looks a little bit friendlier than today. So at this stage – the last thing I heard at least – we expect dry conditions. But we’ll see. It doesn’t really matter. We have a couple of tyres left, surely lots of slick tyres but also in the rain we should be in decent shape. I think it could be an interesting race with mixed conditions tomorrow. So, a long one, 70 laps here and a lot of things that can happen in every single lap.

    PRESS CONFERENCE

    Q: Sebastian, well done again. Another consideration is, have you got any Intermediates left? You were saying you might have a couple of tyres left. If it is wet tomorrow, have you got any Intermediates left?

    SV: No, we don’t have a new set left but obviously it was only a very short run in the last qualifying. I think the sets we used, one was completely new and the other just scrubbed, so yeah, I think it’s tricky. Everyone used up their intermediates to qualify as high up as possible but the bottom line is I think we’re in good shape regarding tyres for both dry – obviously, just like everyone else – and rain conditions.

    Q: It did seem to be an extraordinary session. You had mass starts in the pitlane. It was amazing!

    SV: Yeah. I wasn’t part of that group and actually I did a mistake there because I was too late getting out in Q2 after the red flag, after Felipe had the crash. Yeah, I didn’t want to join the train and get stuck but obviously we left a little bit too late and I didn’t get to do a timed lap at all. Fortunately I made it through to Q3. The time we set before was good enough – but we didn’t get a run in and we were supposed to, so yeah, I messed up the timing a little bit there but fortunately it didn’t cost us anything.

    Q: Lewis, did it all go according to plan? Maybe you felt you could have been on pole.

    LH: Pole was definitely there, so it’s a bit unfortunate but that’s the way it goes.

    Q: Did everything go according to plan?

    LH: No.

    Q: Is that what makes you a little unhappy then?

    LH: …

    Q: What are the chances tomorrow? What do you feel about the weather tomorrow?

    LH: I’ve not really seen what the weather’s going to be like tomorrow. I was told that it’s going to be dry – or maybe raining in the morning and drying out for the race. But, as Sebastian said, it’s changing and it’s going to be good fun. It should be interesting as it has been for the last few years. It’s been very tricky – but I hope it’s dry.

    Q: Valtteri, what do you want tomorrow? More rain?

    VB: Definitely! I think the fact is in the dry the car doesn’t belong to P3 at the moment, so yeah, of course some rain would help us like it did in the qualifying. Because I think we found, for the Inter tyres especially, a quite good way of how to really work the tyre, the right temperatures and everything – so I hope so.

    Q: You did a good job in Monaco keeping it out of the wall – a lot of rookies might have ended up in the wall. You’ve done the same thing here. You’ve been a pretty safe pair of hands as far as I can see. Do you feel that? Are you happy with your performances?

    VB: I think you can never be totally happy with the situation we are in. I still have zero points and there’s still a lot to learn. When I look back there’s so many things you always could have done better. It’s been OK but it could be always better.

    QUESTIONS FROM THE FLOOR

    Q: (Heikki Kulta – Turun Sanomat) Valterri, congratulations. Would you have ever dreamed to be on the second row and also could you please describe your lap?

    VB: Thank you. I don’t think we expected to be on the first or second row. I think everyone in our team was hoping for rain because there’s always a chance if you get the timing right, get everything right, you can maybe finish a bit higher than where the car is sometimes. But yes, the race is tomorrow. If it’s dry, for sure it’s going to be difficult, it’s not going to be easy, so let’s see.

    Q: (Kate Walker – GP Week) Valterri, we’ve seen that you’re ten places ahead of your teammate. Is this because you like the track, you like the conditions? You’re both in the same car.

    VB: I think today was very tricky and it was a lot about the tyre getting a good lap, just at the right time, when the track is in the best condition, having good track position, everything, so it’s not as simple in this weather, so that’s why there can even be ten places between teammates.

    Q: (Stefan Barbé – L’Equipe) If it’s dry tomorrow, do you think you had enough time yesterday to evaluate the tyres for long run pace in the afternoon?

    LH: We did a long run like everyone else, so we have a good understanding what the tyres and the car feels like in the dry and obviously we’ve had the rain and the wet so we should be set for tomorrow.

    SV: I think it was good that practice two yesterday was dry so it allowed everyone to get a read on both soft tyre and the harder or the medium tyre, supersoft and medium.

    VB: I think everyone has plenty of dry tyres so we’ll see.

    Q: (Massimo lopes Pegna– La Gazzetta dello Sport) Sebastian, are you surprised to see Ferrari so far behind you?

    SV: I don’t know where they are but obviously I saw Felipe losing the car into turn three so I’m aware that he’s not very high up. He obviously didn’t take part in Q3. For Fernando, I don’t know where he starts but I think generally – as Valterri touched on – it was quite tricky today and when you were not on the circuit at the right time, then you can be faster than everybody else, for example, but it’s not happening. I think we’ve all experienced it to some extent today. Some, obviously… on average, I think us three up here, we got away with it and mostly used the track in the best condition but you can never really say that you have always been out when it was absolutely at its best, and that makes a big difference. We’re talking easily half a second, a second, two seconds per lap.

    Q: (Bill Beacon – Canadian Press) Lewis, you’ve won here three times, conditions are a lot stranger this time around; how confident are you that you can have a fourth victory here?

    LH: Well, it’s good to be on the front row, that makes it a little bit… brings up the chances a little bit but it’s going to be a tough race tomorrow. Obviously Sebastian’s very quick, even the Ferraris are very quick on the long runs so I guess it really depends on the conditions and at the end of the day I’ve got to do the job. As you know, I love it here so, there’s a great crowd even though the weather was not so great today. I’m sure there will be even more people tomorrow so let’s hope we can put on a good show for them.

    Ends

  • Team leaders on `Secret Testing’ at FIA Friday press meet

    TEAM REPRESENTATIVES – Martin WHITMARSH (McLaren), Christian HORNER (Red Bull Racing), Stefano DOMENICALI (Ferrari), Monisha KALTENBORN (Sauber), Ross BRAWN (Mercedes)

    PRESS CONFERENCE

    Monisha, gentlemen, I’m sure most of my colleagues here would like to hear your views and opinions regarding the tyre test carried out at Barcelona last month. I’m afraid it’s ladies first, Monisha; can we start with you?

    Monisha KALTENBORN: First of all, to really have a proper opinion you need to really have all the facts, which clearly we all don’t, as a team, but from what we know, what we read in the media, it appears that it’s not been in line with the rules, what has happened. And from that, of course, we have to consider the possibility: could the team gain an advantage from that. Reasonably, you could imagine that but again, without the facts it’s difficult to completely assess that and there we also would have to look not only at what’s happened this year, or could happen for this year as a benefit, but also for the following year because this is a time when all of us are defining certain parts of our new car and I think it’s important to see if there any benefits could have arisen for the team because that’s something which you really can’t catch up later on as a competitor. But I’m glad it’s gone to the Tribunal and I’m sure they will assess all these aspects properly.

    Martin, your views?

    Martin WHITMARSH: I think so far we’ve chosen to keep our views to ourselves. As has just been reported it’s gone to the Tribunal and I think they are presumably gathering all the facts and they can take a view.

    Christian, your feelings?

    Christian HORNER: Well our feelings were fairly clear because we raised a protest about it in Monaco. So we believe that it is the responsibility of the entrant to comply with the regulations, so when it came to light that a test with a current car had taken place, our interpretation of the regulations is that that was in clear breach of them and therefore we raised a protest prior to the race for it to be dealt with as an issues by the FIA. It’s really an issue between the team and the FIA. Obviously Pirelli have asked several teams to test, ourselves included but we have declined to do so because we felt that it wasn’t in line with the regulations, certainly with a current car. That’s the situation. It’s gone to the Tribunal and we trust in the FIA to make the appropriate decisions regarding it. I think the important thing is that there needs to be absolute clarity moving forward in terms of what you can do and what you can’t do going forward, you know, what is testing and what isn’t testing. I think that’s more crucial than anything, it is to be fully resolved.

    Stefano?

    Stefano DOMENICALI: Not a lot to add. There is an enquiry; there is this international Tribunal that will handle the situation. They have all the elements for that. So honestly, nothing to add on what we already discussed and for me it’s important that there have been… we were involved in this because we received a lot of questions by the FIA, they have taken their position, so for us it’s pretty clear. Therefore, we wait and see.

    Ross?

    Ross BRAWN: I think, as has been mentioned, the matter has been passed on to the international Tribunal. They will meet presumably in the next few weeks to determine the facts of the case. My personal opinion is that when the facts of the case come out, then people can make a judgment. Obviously we felt we were in a position to be able to do the Pirelli test – it was a Pirelli test, it’s very important to note that – and so the Tribunal will be the time at which all the information will become available. A couple of points I would make: there has been an unfortunate branding of the ‘secret’ test. It was a private test. It wasn’t a secret test. I think anyone who believes you can got to Barcelona and do three days of testing, or 1000km of testing, and not have anyone become aware of it is naïve. It was a private test, not a secret test and sporting integrity is very, very important to us. Very important to Mercedes. And as I say I think when the facts become apparent then people can make a better judgment of the situation.

    QUESTIONS FROM THE FLOOR

    Q: (Ralf Bach – Der Spiegel) Question to Ross. Paul Hembery told us in Monaco, when he had informed the other teams this test had never taken place. Can you just make clear why for you the test is legal?

    RB: Well, it’s a little difficult for me because we’ve got this process going on now where it’s in the hands of the Tribunal. And as was mentioned by the other teams, we trust our process. It’s a new process that the FIA have introduced, an independent process and it’s the first time it’s being tested but I think it has a good structure. As I say, we trust in the Tribunal. So I can’t comment, and I don’t want to comment, I don’t want to anticipate the Tribunal. I think when we get to the Tribunal we’ll get the answers to your questions.

    Q: (Christian Nimmervoll – Motorsport-total.com) Question to everyone – probably – except Ross, who can of course add anything to it: how much of an advantage do you guys think such a test during the season – 1000km – is, and what is it in particular that you can learn from such a session?

    CH: I think that whenever you run the car… when you’re not allowed to test, when you have limited mileage, when the rules are written as they are, when you run a current car of course… for the way that Formula One is, with the way that the amount of technology and with the amount of data analysis there is, you’re always learning. Whether it be reliability, whether it be endurance, whether it be performance. So, of course… even if you’re testing a component for a supplier, you’re learning. I think Formula One has moved an awfully long way over the last few years to ensure fairness and equality to all of the entrants. I think that if a team does carry out 1000km of additional testing with a current car, you’re going to learn something.

    Martin, anything?

    MW: Nothing more to add.

    Q: (Ian Parkes – Press Association) Ross, part of the debate that’s been going on about this test is whether Mercedes gained permission from the FIA as to whether you could run the current car. Are you in a position to state whether you have cast-iron proof from the FIA that will help your case going forward at the Tribunal?

    RB: I think we wouldn’t have done the Pirelli test unless we believed we could do the Pirelli test and I think when we get to the Tribunal, you’ll have your answers.

    Q: (Dan Knutson – Auto Action / National Speedsport News) A question for all of you. If there is to be private testing in the future – I stress private, not secret – and even if it is with a two-year old car, would you like it to be announced so we all know about it beforehand?

    SD: So far, with out interpretation of the regulation, running with a 2011 car, or two years car, is not testing, as per the Sporting Regulations. So that is pretty clear from our point of view. On that respect, we believe, as you know, we are the ones that were pushing since the old ages, we believe that it is important to test. So therefore if, after this situation, we will be in a situation where we can test again, as we have discussed within the teams, as you know, it is, I think, fundamental and I think it’s the right decision.

    Christian?

    CH: I think the lack of transparency is disappointing. That you get to learn these things second hand. I think it is important that there is transparency, of course. If a supplier has issues then it needs to obviously deal with them but when all entrants are supposedly equal, it’s only right and proper that information is made transparently clear.

    Martin?

    MW: No, whatever testing happens there should be transparency and the rules should be clear to everyone.

    Monisha?

    MK: I agree with what’s been said. If you look back at the time the testing was permitted, nobody used to make any big deal out of it: everyone knew that there were test teams out there and you were somewhere in Europe testing.

    Q: (Dieter Rencken – The Citizen) Obviously the entire situation arose because of the regulations banning testing. Two days before the protest was lodged, I believe the big four teams met in Monaco with Mr Ecclestone to discuss testing next year, eight or nine days, I believe. How do you people see this working and then for Monisha, specifically, how will this impact on the smaller teams, should it be introduced? And also will this alleviate the Pirelli tyre test situation that they have at the moment?

    SD: I think that there was this discussion between six teams in Monte Carlo, because as you know, basically, with nothing to hide, we were the ones that were promoting, in a way, to go back to testing because we feel it’s important. And I have to say that we were discussing, we find the right balance between, let’s say, the request from one side and the need to consider – what was on the table – considering also the issue that the small teams have always presented, and I believe that what was agreed and discussed was a fair, sensible balanced approach that now it’s important that we go through and ratify in the new regulations because that’s now the key point for the future. Now is the moment to ratify what we have discussed and what I believe is the right compromise for all the entrants in the championship now.

    RB: I think – as you say quite rightly – there’s been some discussions about testing for next year which will certainly be beneficial for whoever the tyre supplier is in the future but it’s structuring that testing to make sure there is a good commitment to the tyre supplier, to get a proportion of that testing and that is quite a difficult thing to do. If there’s eight days or ten days of testing, how much of that is available to a tyre supplier, because they need testing, they need to feed off something, so I think that’s a point that needs addressing.

    MK: Well, I think even as a smaller team per se we are not against testing because it does have a lot of benefits and looking at next year with a new engine coming up, if you look at young drivers, you can give them mileage there or for suppliers when they need to test, so as such it’s nothing we’re against but for us, it’s all linked with the cost, so our ideal would be that if you try to link this to overall cost saving, so you find some other areas where you can bring the cost down, which again brings up discussions about a cost cap or so, that you can do anything within that, that’s something we would be looking for but as such we wouldn’t really be against testing.

    Q: (Paolo Ianieri – La Gazzetta dello Sport) Ross, should Mercedes be found guilty, do you think that your position would be weakened because there are rumours that you might be the sacrificial lamb of this situation and that in this case you might have to leave the team or have a different future?

    RB: I think there’s been some rumours before and nothing’s happened. I think we should say let’s wait and see what the Tribunal find and then we can go from there. It was my decision to do the test so that’s a fact and let’s see what occurs at Tribunal and we go from there.

    Q: (Kate Walker – GP Week) Ross, I have two questions for you: first, I was wondering if you could explain why you chose to use your race drivers rather than your test driver in the car, given that it was a test? And secondly, one of the rumours that we have heard going round is that you’re in position of an e-mail from Charlie Whiting confirming that you did have permission to do the test. Could you confirm whether or not that e-mail exists?

    RB: The e-mail, I don’t want to comment on any matters of that sort that relate to what’s going to come through in the Tribunal. In terms of running the race drivers, in any form of testing, apart from the young drivers’ test, there’s no control or limitation on the type of driver you have in the car, so it was natural for us to use the drivers we have. We wanted the most representative conditions we could for the Pirelli test, it was as simple as that.

    Q: (Daniel Ortelli – AFP) Ross, you said the test was your decision. Was it connected in any way to the fact that you were disappointed by the result of the race on the previous Sunday, or was it related to the fact you had a guarantee it was tyres for 2014, or both? Was that part of your decision-making?

    RB: I can certainly say that the decision was based in no way on the track performance that we had. I think everyone in Formula One is concerned about some of the delamination that we’ve seen, so I think that’s a worthy objective. Certainly nothing to do with the performance of the car, because nothing was aimed at addressing that.

    Q: (Ralf Bach – Der Spiegel) Ross, did you inform Niki Lauda and Toto Wolff before the test?

    RB: That’s not something I want to comment on. I’m sorry to keep repeating this, but you’ll get all the facts when we get to the Tribunal.

    Q: (Ian Parkes – Press Association) Ross, I just wanted to know how you’re feeling generally. You’ve been accused of being underhand, you’ve been accused of a lack of transparency. Do you feel saddened, frustrated – cornered, even – by all these accusations and by what’s happened?

    RB: I won’t pretend it’s very pleasant at the moment. Again, I’m confident that once we get to the Tribunal the facts will become apparent, and you’ll be able to make a better judgement. We’re trying to focus on the racing. We had a great result in Monaco; a little frustrated that we lost second place with Lewis, as it would have been an even better result, and we’ve got a race here to focus on. We’re going to try and stay aligned with the things we enjoy, like the racing, and we’ll try and keep that in the distance. It’s not very pleasant, but that’s motor racing. I’ve been in it a long time, and I’ve been through these periods before.

    Q: (JC Coté – TSN 9.90 in Montreal) Ross, has it been difficult keeping the team and everybody focused on this weekend and last weekend in Monaco given everything that’s going on around the circumstances of this test?

    RB: You try and bear the load as best you can for the team to make sure that they don’t become distracted. There are one or two people in the team – apart from myself – who are involved in this, in terms of preparing now for the Tribunal. But we’re making sure that everybody is else is left alone to get on and do the best job they can at the race weekend. You can’t deny that it’s a distraction, but we’ll manage it as best we can. Ninety-nine percent of our people are focused on trying to do the best job they can over the race weekend, and there’s one percent of people – including me – that’s got to deal with the after-effects of the Pirelli test.

    Q: (Dieter Rencken – The Citizen) To the four excluding Ross, please: Formula One is entering virgin territory with this Tribunal, we’ve never been there before. I believe the process allows interested parties or affected parties to make representations. Will any of the four of you make a representation in the Tribunal at all? In other words, providing your own evidence or input?

    SD: As you know, at the beginning of this process we were involved; first they wanted to understand the situation so we presented our documentation. The case has been closed on our side, so we added already our comments.

    CH: Obviously it is a new process but again we’ve been asked questions by the FIA, as have others. I think it’s an information-gathering exercise so that the panel of judges can make an informed decision. I think that over the coming days obviously further information may possibly be required. It is a new process, so I think the most important thing is that it’s dealt with quickly and we achieve clarity in terms of what’s possible moving forward. Are we allowed to test out 2014 engine from our third-party supplier next week? There’s certain things that need clarification.

    MW: We’ve responded to the questions from the FIA, but we don’t intend to make separate representation in the hearing.

    Q: And Ross?

    RB: We’ll be there!

    Q: Of course, apologies. Monisha?

    MK: Like the other teams we received questions which we answered. At the moment we don’t plan to submit anything on our own to the judicial body, but if the judges want further information we’ll comply.

    Ends

  • Euphoria of Monaco is gone, focus is on Montreal: Rosberg

    DRIVERS – Charles PIC (Caterham), Jean-Eric VERGNE (Toro Rosso), Giedo VAN DER GARDE (Caterham), Pastor MALDONADO (Williams), Nico ROSBERG (Mercedes), Felipe MASSA (Ferrari)

    PRESS CONFERENCE

    Charles, your second Formula One season, now of course with Caterham. What are your feelings about that? Do you feel that you’re making progress yourself now that you are in your second season?

    Charles PIC: Yeah, of course. The first races were a bit difficult for us and then from China and Bahrain especially we made steps forwards and the car was working much better and I think we are still in this positive mood. We have to keep working like that. Monaco was not an easy one for us. I think the pace and performance was quite good, especially in the race, but then we had this issue with the gearbox. Overall I’m happy with the evolution we have had.

    To some extent you are the team leader, in that you have more experience than Giedo. Is the progress with the car being driven by you?

    CP: No, I think when you do progress it’s driven by everybody in the team. It’s a team effort and teamwork, driven by the two drivers and all the team.

    Jean-Eric, you’ve already had a busy morning. What have you been up to already today?

    Jean-Eric VERGNE: I was at the Polytechnic school, with the FIA for the Action for Road Safety campaign and we had a bit of a chat with the students about safety, the Golden Rules and it was nice. I drove a simulator, so yeah.

    Well, you obviously had a very good qualifying in Monaco and followed it up with a good race, it was the fourth time you’ve finished eighth in a grand prix. The question is whether the car is suited to here and can you carry over that performance to here?

    JEV: Yeah, hopefully. Everything can happen in Canada. Last year wasn’t really a good race for me but you know I think we can carry on the momentum. Definitely the car is getting better and better every race. We obviously don’t have anything new here but I think the whole package that we have is good enough to make a good race again here. I think the improvement on the car is going to continue for the whole season and I’m really pleased with that.

    And the improvement with you in qualifying, that’s important?

    JEV: Definitely. You know, you need to work really well during the whole weekend and to have a good qualifying, especially in Monaco, is really important. I think I’m just improving race by race, it’s as simple as that.

    Giedo, a good performance again in Monaco. Here we are at another temporary circuit, but a circuit you don’t know. Can you carry over that performance from Monaco to here?

    Giedo VAN DER GARDE: We’ll see by Saturday. I think so. The progress is going quite well. We knew that our first four races would be tough but the last few ones we made good progression. The relationship with the team is getting better, the work relationship is good, so I think we can do a good job here again.

    You said earlier on in the year that you’d need probably a third of the season to find your feet. Are you finding your feet now?

    GVDG: Yeah, as a rookie it’s not easy to come in and the first four races were just to learn as much as possible and now the progress is going really well, the relationship with the engineers is really well, with the whole team. So I’m a happy man at the moment.

    Again, this is a new circuit to you. Are you finding it difficult to learn circuits?

    GVDG: We did some practice on the simulator and I like more or less always a street circuit, so let’s see how it goes.

    Q: Pastor, a big accident in Monaco, any after-effects from that?

    Pastor MALDONADO: No, no, I’m OK. I was OK. It was a reset.

    Q: We’ve had a third of the season. Are you seeing progress at Williams?

    PM: Yes. I mean, it was quite difficult to understand the car since the beginning of the season. Especially from the first race. We’ve been fighting a lot to try to fix the problems. We fix the problems but they are not easy to show. We have been working very hard, 24hours a day in the factory, especially in the wind tunnel. The problems are coming from aerodynamic. We’ve been trying to make some progress. I think we understand now a bit more the car and hopefully this race should be much better for us.

    Q: What difference should a new chassis make?

    PM: The chassis is more-or-less the same. Just some new parts, aero parts. Hopefully we are going to solve… not all the problems… but have a step forward. We have been expecting that for some time.

    Q: Felipe, we saw you last in a [medical] collar. And you also have a new chassis here. Tell us a little more about that accident.

    Felipe MASSA: It was two accidents actually! It looks really similar, if you look from the television, but it was completely different accident. The first one, it was, I had… just locked the wheels, went over the bumps and then I went straight. I hit the guardrail first and then I went straight. And the second one, I had a failure in the suspension. It was two different accidents in the same place. It looks very similar but it was two different things. The good thing is that I’m fine. I just felt a little bit of pain on my neck after because two crashes on the same place, in the same direction, y’know? But it was just muscles and its fine. One hundred per cent fine.

    Q: And no dent in your confidence?

    FM: No. For sure no. One hundred per cent confident for here.

    Q: How important is a good result here for Ferrari? Because it wasn’t a very good result in Monaco.

    FM: Yeah, I think it’s very important. We didn’t have the weekend we expected in Monaco. Just looking forward to going back to a good weekend – for both: for me, for Fernando, for the team. I hope the car works well on this track and we can fight for another podium again?

    Q: Nico, has the euphoria of Monaco finally worn off?

    Nico ROSBERG: Unfortunately yes! It goes quite quick in this sport. Already a couple of days afterwards, the focus went completely to Montreal. I mean, first of all understanding what we did right and wrong in Monaco and then preparing for Montreal and trying to get the most out of this weekend.

    Q: But you seem to be on a roll with pole positions. What chances?

    NR: Yes, well, qualifying has been very good. Our car has been the quickest car in qualifying for quite some time now. So, as a speed, I think we just have a very, very fast car. So I’m confident I’ll be quite far up the grid again in qualifying here. It is a different situation a little bit here: it’s lower downforce so that could mix things up a little bit, different track and everything so we’ll have to wait and see – but qualifying should be good, yeah.

    Q: It is a very different circuit in terms of demands; high speed and low grip as opposed to low speed and high grip, so it should be interesting to see if the car works here as well.

    NR: Yes – and that’s why we need to be a little bit carefully coming here. It could be a little bit of a different situation. Some other teams might be stronger or whatever. But in general we’re going to be there or thereabouts.

     QUESTIONS FROM THE FLOOR

     Q: (Kate Walker – GP Week) Nico, I understand you’re not allowed to comment on an awful lot of aspects of the recent tyre test, but one thing that we were wondering is because it was a Pirelli-specific test – you weren’t testing new components, anything like that –  why were you and Lewis doing the driving rather than (test driver) Sam (Bird)?

    NR: Don’t know. That was what the team decided. I think also for Pirelli it’s better if we are in the car, because it’s more representative because Sam doesn’t drive much, so for sure he won’t be able to go on our pace and bring the Pirellis through the laps exactly as we would, who had the experience of the Grand Prix that weekend. So definitely for Pirelli it’s an advantage to have us in the car, I would say.

    Q: (Alex Popov – RTR) Nico, there are a lot of completely useless statistics but one that is interesting about Canada is that you have qualified 6-0 here against your teammates and Lewis has qualified 5-0 against his teammates, so how important will it be on Saturday for you?

    NR: I didn’t know that. It’s a track I like, definitely. I enjoy this track. I’m confident coming here and qualifying is going to be exciting and important also, but a little bit less important at this track (than Monaco) maybe because you can overtake and tyre degradation is going to be an issue, so there’s going to be a lot happening in the race. But anyway, as in all tracks, even with this statistic or no statistics, it’s always a big challenge to try and be ahead of Lewis in qualifying because he’s obviously very very quick.

    Q: (Alex Popov – RTR) For everybody, would you comment on Sergio’s race in Monaco? Do you agree with Kimi’s views or not?

    J-EV: I’m not going to comment.

    CP: No.

    Looks like a non-starter I’m afraid.

    Q: (Paolo Ianieri – La Gazzetta dello Sport) Felipe, why have you never got on the podium here, is there a special reason for that?

    FM: So, why I never made a podium here? I think my best result was fourth. I think last year was pretty much in the right direction as well, I just spun but I was pretty quick during the weekend. Why, I don’t know. But I will try, definitely, one hundred percent.

    Q: (Paolo Ianieri – La Gazzetta dello Sport) Nico, if you say it was just a normal test, why were you and Lewis using anonymous helmets?

    NR: Don’t want to comment on that. Sorry.

    Q: (Luis Fernando Ramos – Racing Magazine) Nico and Felipe, the more experienced of the drivers; if it’s dry tomorrow you will try these new Pirelli tyres in free practice; is this a track too specific to draw any conclusions or will it be OK, you can draw conclusions from here and use them on other circuits in the season?

    NR: For sure you can draw conclusions, yeah. Hopefully we will get a few dry laps and it will be good to try them and understand a bit more of what is to come and what to expect in the next races.

    FM: I don’t think it will be so easy to have a conclusion. First of all, it’s maybe raining; you can forget about a conclusion and you need to see how many laps you can do on the tyres to understand (them), so it’s not also an easy track to understand. It’s a track that is getting better all the time, during practice, so it won’t be so easy to get a conclusion, I think.

    Q: (Flavio Vanetti – Corriere della Serra) Felipe, you had a tough moment after the accident in 2009 when you had to come back and drive. Is it easier now or is it almost the same from a psychological point of view?

    FM: It’s completely different because I don’t remember anything about my accident and now I remember everything (about my two in Monaco) but that wasn’t the problem. I was fine so I just got out of the car and it was no problem. I think when you are OK you don’t have any problem, you just jump in the car and you go out again. It’s completely different from 2009.

    Q: (Sean Gordon – The Globe and Mail) What are your favourite memories of Montreal, whether it’s on or off the track?

    FM: I hope it will be this weekend. Well, I think it was a very good race that I did for Sauber in 2004, I guess. I was fourth, so it was a very good race. I think that was the best.

    NR: Not sure, maybe the qualifying my first year; I’m not sure if I was fifth or sixth, but it was a great qualifying that year, so maybe that was a good memory.

    PM: I have no good memories of this track.

    GvdG: I think my best memory is in 2001 when I was here for the Kart World Championship. It was my first race in Formula Super A and I won the first race, so it was a good memory. Long way back.

    J-EV: I don’t really remember. Maybe my holidays here. That’s it.

    CP: Last year it was my first time here. Qualifying was a bit tough for us but we had a good race afterwards, so I think it was last year’s race.

    Q: (Heikki Kulta – Turun Sanomat) Nico, last year after Monaco you were 17 points behind the leader; now you are 60 points behind. Do you think you could still be in a better position for the rest of the season, right now, compared to last year?

    NR: Last year, at the same point in time, I was quite confident for the rest of the season, because we were really in a good string of results. I think there were six races where I got the most points so at the same point in time I was quite confident, but looking back, of course, it didn’t go well. Now, again, I’m confident, yeah, because the car is very fast at the moment and it’s just a matter of getting a better grip on the tyres and trying to understand them better and better and we’re in that process at the moment. It’s really not easy but I think hopefully we’re making some progress. We will see again this weekend. This weekend is going to be a big challenge for that but if we can get a grip on that then it’s going to be a good next couple of races so I’m quite confident, yeah, maybe more confident now, then.

    Q: (Pierre Durocher – Journal de Montréal) Nico, how concerned are you about the tyre wear on this track?

    NR: It will definitely be one of the key aspects of the weekend. We have the supersofts again here, degradation is going to be an issue and possibly that’s going to be the decider as to who wins the race, who has the best control over that.

    Q: Which would you prefer: a dry or wet race, given the problems you have been having with the tyres?

    NR: I don’t know. Possibly even wet, yeah, because our car is really quick in the wet. I’ve been feeling very comfortable in the wet this year, maybe even wet, yeah.

    Q: (Ernesto Nigro – F1 Plus.com) In-season testing over the use of simulators; how much more effective would that be and would you welcome it back?

    FM: It would be welcomed, definitely. A simulator is always what we have, to try to understand something, but it’s always a simulator so when you are in the real situation on the track, you definitely understand a lot better so it would be welcome.

    NR: Just as Felipe said, it’s so difficult to get the simulator one hundred percent realistic so there are always several things that are better when you test the real car, more accurate.

    GvdG: I think it’s also good for a rookie to have more track time, of course. It’s how it is now.

    Q: (Olivier Arbour – Radio Canada) To all of you: what do you think about Sergio Perez’s driving; do you share Button’s view that he should maybe calm down, or are you more on Raikkonen’s side?

    GvdG: If nobody comments I will comment. I know Checco quite well, we were teammates together in 2010. I think he’s a real fighter, you know, and he’s a guy who wants to win – everybody likes to win – but of course how he raced in Monaco, sometimes he did well, sometimes going over (the top) but I think it’s a tough call.

    PM: No comment.

    Q: (Livio Oricchio – O Estado de Sao Paulo) This subject is old but it’s interesting to hear from all of you who never won the World Championship up to now, about the Wall of Champions here. Is there any particular reasons it attracts World Champions there, is there any technical challenge that explains all the incidents we have there?

    NR: It’s a nice little legend, it’s a difficult corner, yeah, because if you go in a little bit too fast you get that second kerb too much and you’re in the wall, so it’s a very very challenging corner, but there’s no reason to explain why a lot of World Champions have gone in there.

    FM: It’s two different things: it’s a different corner, it’s a corner that if you try to be a bit too aggressive you can hit the wall but it’s two different things.

    Ends

  • To win at home is very special: Rosberg

    DRIVERS

     1 – Nico ROSBERG (Mercedes)

    2 – Sebastian VETTEL (Red Bull Racing)

    3 – Mark WEBBER (Red Bull Racing)

    TV UNILATERAL

    Q: Nico, you controlled the race from pole position but you had to deal with two safety cars, a red flag, a lot of mental resets no doubt, but describe your feelings right now, you’re a Monaco Grand Prix winner?

    Nico ROSBERG: Yeah, amazing! This is my home, I’ve grown up here lived all my life here, I’ve gone to school here. So now to win at home is very special; a very special day for me. The whole weekend really went perfectly, qualifying [everything]. The start was very close. I had a terrible start! I was close to Sebastian and then with Lewis also, but then that worked out well. After that I could control the pace. The car was really good, the tyres held on ok, so that was really the key to the victory. So massive thanks to the team for having improved from Barcelona and I’m just ecstatic

    Q: Sebastian, podium for you today, I guess you must be delighted that you’ve extended your championship lead?

    Sebastian VETTEL: Yeah, I think overall I’m very happy and pleased with the result. We know that it’s very difficult to overtake here. I think first of all congratulations to Nico, he did a very good job, a very controlled race. I think he had the pace and the tyres to respond whenever we tried to get a little bit closer, yeah. The start of the race… fantastic start but no room. I think I could have gone past both Mercedes but didn’t have the room, had to lift. Then Mark came and it was tight into the first corner. And after that I was a bit surprised by the slow pace in the opening laps. Usually you expect two silver arrows in front of you and there were two buses today going for a cruise – at least in the first couple of laps. But obviously the strategy was clear and they did a very good job. We were lucky on the strategy point of view. The team did a fantastic job to get past Lewis, so yeah. After that, with the restart: pretty difficult. Warm-up was very, very tricky. I saw Lewis was all over Mark behind me, so I think we can happy with the result. Great achievement from the team again. We seem to like this place the last couple of years so very happy. Congratulations, thank you, thanks to our partners as well. Thanks to Infinity, they are pushing an awful lot in the last couple of months to help us and I think it goes without saying, thanks to Renault as well, two cars out of three on the podium again powered by Renault – in ‘Little France’ in a way, so it’s sort of a home grand prix for them so congratulations as well.  Overall, as I said, pretty happy.

    Q: Mark, fourth in the opening stint but obviously the safety car at the first stop gave you and the team the opportunity to jump ahead of Hamilton. Important moment for you?

    Mark WEBBER: Yes. First of all, congratulations to Nico. It’s a very special place to win at so, yeah, he had a seamless weekend and that’s what you need to do here. It’s never easy when you’re leading, you still have to pull it off. So, well done to Nico and Mercedes. For us, we knew it was a little against us starting on the second row but got an absolutely incredible start – and sod’s law it’s the shortest run to the first corner so, I think Seb and I had nowhere to go really so we were lifting. It’s looking like Nico and Lewis had pretty tricky ones, so we’ll try to save some of those starts for future reference. And then after that it was just basically saving tyres and making the one-stop work. It was completely predictable that if the race was going to stack up then the two-stop was not really an option to come back into traffic. So we had to go very long, all the drivers were nursing the cars very aggressively and as you say, it was nice to get Lewis. Obviously it’s never nice to lose positions around the stop so I’m sure he’s not too pleased with it but in the end we’ll take that position. It was difficult to get the restarts going on the primes but in general just really driving around, saving the tyres and waiting for the chequered flag.

    Q: Nico, first son of a former Monaco Grand Prix winner to repeat the feat. Congratulations. 30 years on from your father Keke’s victory here at Monaco. Did that add a certain extra-special something to this win today.

    NR: It is special to hear that, yes but honestly that’s not what I was thinking about when I was crossing the finishing line, definitely not. Just extremely happy to win this race. Also, we’ve had again such a difficult time behind us. In the last couple of races pole position and dropping back so much. There was always that a little bit in the back of my mind today in the race: ‘I hope that it’s going to last and I’ll be able to pull it off today and not drop back again.’ Because it’s not nice when you’re starting in front and dropping back. And then today the team gave me a great car. It’s really fantastic to see how they’ve been able to improve in such a short space of time. Little improvement here and there but on this track – this track suited us anyway – and so it was enough to make it happen.

    PRESS CONFERENCE

    Q: Nico, what was it like to be in control of a race but then have to mentally reset each time? There was nothing straightforward about the way that race unfolded for you today.

    NR: No, definitely not. It wasn’t very nice y’know? Because I was in a great rhythm on those prime tyres, trying to nurse them towards the end and then all of a sudden a race stoppage. It’s never nice to get out of that rhythm y’know? Because especially around Monaco it’s so easy to have a quick concentration error and then you’re in the tyre barrier and it’s the end of the race. So, it was really important today to remain concentrated and that didn’t make it easy, all those safety cars and the red flag and everything – but fortunately in the end it all worked out.

    Q: Did you think at any point about the school runs you used to do down these roads and the fact that you were actually going to be winning a race on the roads you used to go to school on?

    NR: No! There was a lot of thoughts going through my mind, definitely, but not about the roads to school. Various things. Even, to be honest, winning Monaco in a silver arrow. I was thinking about that and that’s very special to me.

    Q: Sebastian, you hinted in your answer in the unilateral that the Mercedes were slower in the opening stint than you expected them to be. You said it was fair play to them but you could tell they were driving to a tactic today.

    SV: Yes, definitely. I think we could see that the field didn’t spread out, so as I said, they did what worked best for them. Obviously Lewis lost a couple of positions with the safety car – I’m sure he’s not too pleased about that – but we took that, no question. Yeah, I think it was very marginal on one stop. I think the red flag helped all of us to put a fresh set of tyres on to save that ten, eleven laps, total race distance. It was clear what they were doing a couple of laps after the start. They were going quite slow and trying to obviously make the one stop happen. And fair play, they were in the lead, around here it’s very tricky to pass. Every time I tried to get a little bit closer with Lewis… in the beginning with Lewis it was quite close, yeah they reacted, they had the pace, so they could afford to go slow and then if they had to, they had the pace to pick it up again. In that regard, not the most exciting race because you just wait for the chequered flag. It’s still a lot of laps, looking after the tyres wasn’t straightforward for us today – so overall, happy with the result we got.

    Q: Obviously when the safety car came out that caught Lewis out, the Mercedes had just completed a lap. Where exactly were you when you got the message to come into the pits.

    SV: The safety car wasn’t out yet. Obviously it was a very, very good call from the team. Initially we wanted to pit a lap earlier but then we aborted that. Obviously there was a yellow and in the end I think we were just a little bit lucky. So we decided to pit and when I changed tyres and went back out, at the same moment the safety car came – which probably helped us a little bit. I don’t know if Lewis had a problem with the stop or if it was just down to the fact that the safety car came at the wrong time for him. But, yeah, it was nice. At some stage I was hoping that it might be enough to get Nico as well but he obviously was in the lead by quite a bit at that time, before we came in.

    Q: Mark, there were quite a lot of incidents today, obviously a couple of safety cars, red flags. Some drivers were making passes today but did it feel very touch-and-go, very marginal out there to you?

    MW: To make moves? Yeah, I think so. Especially when you’re with the guys I was with today, very experienced and they know what they need to do and where to put the car so, unless you had a big discrepancy in tyre performance, like I did after my pitstop – I had to clear Nico Hülkenberg pretty quick and try to make that undercut work a little bit – but in general after that, as the guys have touched upon, it was measured, controlled aggression, if you like, trying to nurse the tyres as best you can. It became very, very obvious early in the grand prix that the tyres were going pretty well. Obviously the pace wasn’t electric and, fair enough, that’s how… you can do that if you’re at the front of the race, as I did last year, so you can do that. And when the options were starting to go that far – the supersoft – the one-stop started to become viable for everybody and that’s why it probably wasn’t a super-exciting race today for the fans. But even if it was two-stops, it would probably have just been a bit more action around the pitstops and obviously not much on circuit because that’s the sort of track it is.

    QUESTIONS FROM THE FLOOR

    Q: (Ralf Bach –  Der Spiegel) Nico, the two secret test days that you had in Barcelona. How helpful were those days for you?

    NR: That you have to ask, you have to ask Pirelli about all this, about this issue. I’m not going to comment. I’m not going to comment on that. You have to ask Pirelli.

    Q: (Kate Walker – GP Week) Nico, we often hear drivers say that the most exciting race to win other than their home Grand Prix is Monaco. Obviously this is both for you. Could you please give us a bit of a sense of the elation and euphoria you must be feeling? What was it like doing that slowing down lap?

    NR: Unbelievable. If there’s maybe a childhood dream… when I was quite young, watching the race, always. First memories were of Ayrton Senna with his yellow helmet, red and white winning, a childhood dream to one day win the Grand Prix of Monaco, because it is my home and that’s the most special race for me to win, so the feeling was just incredible, it was unreal. That’s what’s so special about the sport:   these emotions that you then get and that makes up for all the difficult moments that have gone before, those great moments of joy and winning. Amazing.

    Q: (Vincent Marre – Sport Zeitung) Nico, now that everything is going well, I would like to rate the percentage of your chances of winning the title?

    NR: I haven’t thought about that at all yet, because just two weeks we ago were seventy seconds away in the race and even today, tyre degradation was still an issue. I think we were in a better position, much better definitely, but it’s also a different track, very different track, different circumstances. I had the possibility of taking it easy and dictating the pace initially to save tyres, so we shouldn’t get over-excited now, for the next couple of races. We still have a bit of an issue with our race pace and that’s still what we need to work on, and also the development race. Everybody’s pushing forward, flat out, and we need to make sure to keep up with that as we have been doing at the moment, which is great to see, because that was one of our weaknesses last year, we dropped away mid-season. For now it’s going really well, so thanks to everybody back in the factory, doing a really cool job. But we have to wait and see. I’m definitely not thinking about the championship, I’m just thinking about today, winning Monaco.

    Q: (Jussi Jakala – YLE) Nico, do you think this was maybe the final seal to get rid of the status of being Keke’s son, so that you have achieved everything by your own skills now?

    NR: Don’t know, that’s for you to judge. I don’t think about that in that sense so you need to judge that for yourself. I can’t comment on that.

    Q: (Dan Knutson – Auto Action/National Speedsport News) Mark, before the red flag, Lewis got right up alongside you at Rascasse. What happened, did he maybe catch you by surprise there?

    MW: No, I was probably just saving my tyres a bit too much and yeah, he was going for a little bit of a surge also, I think. They were probably a little bit more comfortable on the primes in certain performance areas of the circuit and also the car characteristics, so, yeah, he was a little bit more comfortable on that section of the track. I was also just… we knew we had a long way to go in the race and also I had four or five laps less on my tyres, because I did the undercut on these guys. I had to give him room. I think experience helps in those scenarios. I thought he might tap me… I could just see him in the mirror. I thought ‘mmm, he’s in there somewhere’ but I had to give him the room and then thank God we got round Rascasse together somehow. I think that was probably not that straightforward. Not possible for GP2 drivers but us boys managed to pull it off which we should be able to so it was a rewarding little battle.

    Q: (Bob McKenzie – Daily Express) Nico, referring back to that previous question about your father; have you at times, when you were younger or when you came into Formula One, did you feel any pressure from the fact that your father was so well known, being a World Champion, that sort of thing?

    NR: I’ve always felt very fortunate to have had my father… what he achieved and everything… to have his support and extra pressure? It’s a normality for me you know, having my father World Champion. I grew up with that, started racing like that, so it’s not something where I feel any extra pressure because for me that’s normal.

    Q: (Jacqueline Magnay – News LTD Australia) Mark, I’m just wondering whether you have an opinion on this secret tyre testing, whether it had any impact, and whether you think there was any advantage to Mercedes having done the testing?

    MW: That’s a fair question. I think we were probably a little bit surprised that it happened. I don’t think it probably had a huge bearing on today’s result. I think their car was always going to perform pretty well round here, to be fair, but yeah, you can’t unlearn what went on at the test obviously, so we need to see how the test  came about and whether it’s within the rules or not. I’m sure Mercedes thought it was OK, so that’s why they did it, so time will tell. But I don’t think it affected today’s result.

    Q: (Frederic Ferret – L’Equipe) Nico, what was the most difficult thing for your victory today, getting the pole yesterday, starting after the safety car, or the last lap with the emotion?

    NR: Qualifying was difficult because of the conditions. The start was very difficult because I had a bad start. Those were the two keys. Once those two things were done, from then on it was OK. There were still some challenges with the safety car, because the tyres were very cold on those prime tyres, for example so there were other challenges but the main ones were qualifying and the start.

    Ends