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  • I am incredibly humbled for the team being so sufficient, says Lewis Hamilton

    I am incredibly humbled for the team being so sufficient, says Lewis Hamilton

    For a change, we upload the Podum picture with Press Conference report as Mexico offered a variety of colour… Watch out for the photo gallery by Abhishek Aggarwal

    Mexico City, 27 Oct 2019: Lewis Hamilton of Mercedes won the Mexican Grand Prix and along with Sebastian Vettel of Ferrari and teammate Valtteri Bottas attended the mandatory FIA post-race Press Conference to share his thoughts with the reporters.

    Before that he spoke to Jenson Button who did the Track interviews:

    Transcript:

    Q: Lewis, you’ve have had some pretty epic victories and a lot of them come through sheer aggression and excitement. This one was a very different victory it seems. Looking after these tyres like you did was immense.

    Lewis HAMILTON: Firstly, we’ve got to applaud this incredible crowd. This is like the best crowd I think I’ve ever seen. We’ve never seen anything like this. Today is an incredible result. I have to say a huge thanks to my team – Mercedes and our partners here. The guys have continued to work incredibly hard and stay focused. We came here thinking that we were on the back foot, knowing that it’s a difficult race for us, tut we pulled through. I had a quite a bit of damage on my car, so the race was quite a bit of a struggle. I just kept my head down. It seemed like a long second stint, but ah man, I’m so grateful for today.

    Q: Awesome, great to hear. It must a real mix of emotions. The last two years you come here and you haven’t been on the podium but you clinched the championship. This year, you come and dominate and win but you have to wait a little bit longer for the championship?

    LH: Yeah, I don’t mind. I love racing, man, and I just take it one race at a time honestly. As I said, this is a race I’ve wanted to win for some time but it’s always been a little bit tricky for us. So, I’m incredibly humbled by today’s opportunity, for the car holding together as it did, and for the team being so sufficient and executing the best strategy. Just to hold up the Ferraris was not so easy at the end but I hope people enjoyed the race.

    Q: Congratulations, go and enjoy this amazing crowd. Seb, I’m sure it’s not quite the result you were after. You looked really exciting in the first stint. You were able to put in some really good lap times. I thought you were going to pop out behind Lewis and make it happen but you didn’t quite have that?

    Sebastian VETTEL: Not really. I think surprisingly the hard tyres worked really well. It was a very intense race, because there was no break and obviously I had Valtteri behind me giving me some pressure in the final stint, before I could focus on Lewis in the front. But yeah, I think Lewis, he was just cruising for most of the second stint, up to the point that the attack was arriving and then I guess he had enough tyres left so… Yeah, I’m happy, because I think it was a good race, but I think here and there maybe with strategy we could have been a bit sharper. But overall, it’s a great crowd.

    Q: It’s amazing, the support these guys give you must really mean a lot?

    SV: Yeah… I didn’t hear what you said!

    Q: I said that these guys give you so much support. It must mean a lot.

    SV: You can tell! I didn’t hear what you said. It’s incredible. It’s one of the best races for that, so looking forward to the podium.

    Q: Great job. Valtteri: I’ll bet it’s a bit bittersweet after yesterday – the issue in qualifying – getting winded is never a nice feeling. But the pace today, and your aggression was really coming through.

    Valtteri BOTTAS: Yeah, I enjoyed. Considering yesterday it was a good result. Very happy about the pace I had in the race. The start was quite tricky, I dropped a place there, so I had to come back a little bit. Yeah, I don’t think we could have done much more today from where I started, so looking at that it was pretty good.

    Q: You seem really confident in the car. In the last few races you seem to have upped your game, which is necessary with a team-mate like Lewis. Are you feeling really good in the car? Is this promising for the rest of the season?

    VB: yeah, feeling good. Definitely a lot better than the same time last year. So feeling like I have the pace and the confidence and happy feeling in the car. I just need to continue and I look forward to next weekend.

    PRESS CONFERENCE

    Q: Sebastian Vettel, our second-placed finisher. Great race by you, Seb. Couple of things: first of all, at the start we saw you flexing your muscles on the run down to Turn 1 to Lewis?

    SV: Not really. I didn’t see him. He came after the race as well and asked, but no intention to push him or anything. Obviously, as soon as I saw, I obviously got off and I tried to get in Charles’ tow and I checked the mirrors on the right and the mirrors on the left and that’s when I saw Lewis and then, you know, I tried to go right but before that point I didn’t see him. We see quite well in the mirrors but there is still obviously an angle that you can’t see.

    Q: You said a little bit earlier to Jenson Button that you could have been a bit sharper on strategy today as a team. What did you mean by that? You pitted at half distance, do you think you left yourself too much to do?

    SV: Not really. I think in the end… after the race it’s always easy to say but I think we were confident that we split the cars, we covered both options. Obviously in Lewis’ shoes and Mercedes’ shoes they had nothing to lose so they might as well from that early to make it. And Lewis did well managing his tyres in the second stint, and just cruising up to the point where we arrived. It worked finally but neither them nor us expected the tyres to last that long. We saw a lot of graining on Friday and so did they actually, they saw a bit more than us, so it was a bit of a surprise that today we didn’t have any and that made the difference. You might as well try, so it’s a brave call. In the end if it works you look great, if it doesn’t then you’ve tried. I think if it was so straightforward for them, the thinking of fitting the hard so early and easily making it to the end, then they should have pitted Valtteri as well, but you can see that obviously he stayed out with me, long, to try and make sure that you make the one stop work and you don’t fall off any cliffs. As I said, we tried everything but ultimately… yeah, maybe we could have been a bit braver, but then it’s a lot of unknown and you don’t want to do anything stupid at that point. And second, I think you could see that in the race trim we were just missing a little bit of pace. Valtteri was closing in at the end of the first stint. Lewis was fairly easily closing in during the first stint as well. So I think it’s also fair to say that they were just a bit quicker than us.

    Q: Thanks. Valtteri we’ll come to you in just a moment, but we’re joined now by our winner Lewis Hamilton. Congratulations Lewis. Now, given the pace of Ferrari and Red Bull this weekend, how surprised are you to be sitting in the middle?

    LH: I think probably for both of us it’s a bit of a surprise. We came into the weekend… I can only talk about my side, and not having ‘Bonno’ for the first time in seven years and the challenge of having two new engineers step up into different roles and trying to keep the balance of pressure and make sure we deliver and ultimately make Bonno proud was not easy. We come to Mexico, we always struggle here with our tyres, last year we lost by like 60 seconds or something. I think we finished like fourth but we were a long way away from these guys and on Friday their pace, particularly the Red Bulls, their pace was quite stronger than ours. Seb went like eight or nine laps further than I could make the tyres go. But we just kept our heads down and tried to work on trying to get the most out of our car and it wasn’t great through qualifying but the race pace, once we got through all the commotion at the beginning, he tried his best to…

    SV: Not really. As I said, I didn’t really try, I just didn’t see you!

    LH: I’m messing with you.

    SV: But if I had seen you, yes, I would have tried.

    LH: And then I obviously got torpedoed. I thought at some stage I’d get torpedoed by Max. And then after that trying to keep up with Seb was a real challenge. A first and third is a true showing of real strength and depth with our team and it’s a real pleasant surprise really, because we didn’t expect our tyres to go as far as they did. We didn’t think we could manage a one-stop and we made it work.

    Q: You said you were expecting a bit of action from Max early on in the race. Talk us through those opening corners?

    LH: I actually got a really good start, so I was pulling up to Charles and Seb is coming across, coming across, coming across and I’m thinking ‘I’m on the white line, I don’t have anywhere further to go’. And he just keeps coming. So I had to avoid crashing with him, going on the grass. Avoid his wheels as well, otherwise I could have caused a big collision for him. Then I was surrounded by a bunch of cars, I braked into Turn 1, and all of a sudden Max is alongside me. If you’ve seen races before, I always leave Max a lot of space – it’s the smartest thing you can do. But there wasn’t a lot of space to give him space. I think he had an oversteer moment or something and then I got a massive hit from behind. Then I nearly took him out…

    SV: He hit you?

    LH: Yeah. We were going through the corner, you were about to go into Turn 2, my back end came out and I nearly took you out and then we went straight over the grass. It was hair-raising.

    SV: Ah, that’s why there was such a big gap and there was Albon all of a sudden…

    LH: Yeah, me and Max went through the grass together, came out and there were other cars coming by. I thought I was going to get hit by other cars. But I managed to get my bearings and keep my head down. I was not expecting to have that pace and to be able to keep up with the Ferraris but it worked and even with a damaged car. Obviously Seb went a lot further and I think so did Valtteri, he did a fantastic job to come from sixth. I thought I was going to struggle at the end with Seb, with 10-lap younger tyres.

    SV: More than 10. Was it just 10?

    LH: Maybe more than 10. But I just managed to save enough in the early phase while he was doing that long run, which I was able to utilise. Particularly those last seven laps were the important ones and I kept him behind.

    Q: Great race, thank you Lewis. Valtteri, as Lewis said, great race from sixth to third. How was the car and were you suffering any after effects from your crash yesterday?

    VB: I think it was a good day considering the circumstances. And looking back to yesterday it was a pretty good contrast in a good way for today. The car felt good. It felt as good as before the crash and obviously the team made a really good in getting it back together, so thanks to the boys again for that. From my side no problem really. Small headache in the morning but I wasn’t sure if it was from the tequila or the crash. Anyway, all good. I felt good in the car and I’m pleased for today, even though I lost some positions at the start and I lost a lot of time behind the McLarens but I had really strong pace in both of the stints and as a team we maximised today for sure.

     

    QUESTIONS FROM THE FLOOR

     

    Q: (Frédéric Ferret – L’Equipe) Question to Sebastian. We heard you during the race questioning the strategy of the team two times: about the Plan C and going to box. Do you think afterwards that one of these two strategies could have been better for the victory?

    SV: I think, as Lewis said as well, obviously before the race we were quite sure that you need to get to a certain lap to make the one-stop work and when Lewis pitted, that wasn’t the case yet. Obviously, you know, we were one and two and the two-stop looked like the better strategy and faster strategy so we split the cars, and obviously if you go for the one-stop, you might as well go for the one stop properly and not, sort-of, half-hearted, so when Lewis pitted, I think it was borderline and probably a bit too early but, as he said, he made the tyres last well and had enough towards the end. Plus, I think we didn’t see any graining in the race, which we did on Friday, which I think made the biggest difference. So, then, after that, you can argue maybe we could have taken more risk – but at that point you’re really driving into the unknown. I think what they tried to do is fit the Hard, see if it makes it. If it doesn’t make it, you might as well fit another set at the end and there’s your two stops. When you are sitting in P3 and then having the option to finish, maybe, first or fifth. I think you may as well try. So, that’s one. The second one, I think is just the laps when Valtteri was closing through traffic. Maybe we could have boxed one lap sooner because I hit that traffic quite hard and there was Sainz – or Norris, I don’t know – one McLaren and a Toro Rosso fighting each other very hard and I lost, like, three seconds just on that lap. That didn’t help but obviously it’s also difficult to foresee that these two guys on that lap will have a major fight. So, I think nothing big. As I said, I think we tried everything. Two and One stop, and you have to give it to Lewis, he drove well, he made the tyres last and I think Mercedes in the race was maybe just a little bit quicker than us.

    Q: (Christian Nimmervoll – motorsport-total.com) Lewis, after the incident with Max, was there any damage to the car and, if yes, did it actually cost you lap time?

    LH: Yeah, a big part of the side of my rear floor was missing. I didn’t actually know how much was missing or what was damaged but the balance was quite a lot different. The rear end was quite weak so I was particularly sliding around a lot in the high-speed, so I had to change my settings quite a lot and had to drive it a little bit differently because I couldn’t attack the same way on the entry of corners because the rear stability wasn’t the same. I’ll probably find out later on just how much we were losing but I would imagine a good couple of tenths probably, just from rear floor damage. It’s quite a sensitive area around where the tyres is. But why I’m probably even more happy that I was able to make these tyres last the way we did. And to do it here in Mexico is pretty special.

    Q: (Lawrence Edmondson – ESPN) Question for Valtteri. Your contact with Max in the stadium section, can you talk us through what happened there? And also, to all three drivers: Max – do you treat him differently when you’re racing against him and do you think he’s probably the most aggressive driver out there?

    VB: Yeah, for me, just out of nowhere he appeared on the inside into Turn 13 and, you know, I couldn’t disappear from there. He just dived in and we touched. He got a puncture from that, so… yeah, I couldn’t really avoid him, so I think he earned his own puncture, definitely. But… I don’t know, every driver is obviously different. Some are more aggressive, some are less. I haven’t raced very closely for some time with all of them, so I can’t say in detail for all the drivers.

    Lewis, you touched on this earlier. Do you treat Max differently to other drivers?

    LH: Err… yep. I think every driver is slightly different. Some are smarter; some are like very smart, aggressive and some are silly with it. And so, through those experiences of racing with people, you give some more space and others you don’t have to. They’re quite respectful. But yeah, Max, it’s very likely you’re going to come together with Max if you don’t give him extra space, so most of the time you do. But as I said, in my experience, I didn’t have a lot of space to give him extra space. But I don’t think it was intentional or anything like that. It was just… he’s a magnet for those kind of things but yeah, nonetheless, I managed to keep the car together and in a straight line, fortunately.

    Sebastian. Max?

    SV: Yes and yes.

    Can you put a bit more flesh on the bone?

    SV: No, just copy-paste. It’s true.

    Q: (Omar Alvarez – Graining) This is question for Lewis. What do you think, from your point of view, is missing from Ferrari? What is Ferrari doing wrong? They show pace. They show the speed and on the race day something happened. What do you think is missing in Ferrari?

    LH: Honestly, I usually get paid for that kind of advice, so I probably wouldn’t tell you exactly what it is! I don’t know. They’ve done a great job. The second half of the season has been obviously spectacularly for them. They came with a slightly different philosophy, I think, to some of the other teams. There’s generally a little bit less downforce through corners but faster in straights – which has worked really well because in a lot of tracks, positioning is everything and you can’t get past them down the straights and they’re just about quick enough in a straight line. But we managed to… I guess we managed to overlap them, or outdo them, particularly with great tyre usage within the race, and strategy. You don’t too often see me and Valtteri, our team like falling over each other. With us, they did a great job with that but sometimes Ferrari has that and it’s been unfortunate for one – or two – of the drivers. But Seb’s been driving great recently so it’s been good to see him back up there, driving so well. Naturally we want to have closer wheel-to-wheel races but on some of these tracks you can’t get too close, unfortunately. [to Seb] You’re sticking around for a little bit longer, right? Good good.

    Sebastian, I feel we should give you the right of reply. What do you feel you’ve been lacking on Sundays?

    SV: Well, if you want to be just pure and honest, then I think our car is good in a straight line: one because we have an efficient car, so that’s credit to us; two because I think we’ve done a really good job on the power unit front, so compliments to Maranello. But we are lacking downforce which leads into maybe a weaker race pace, leads onto struggling a bit more on Sundays when it’s about managing the tyres and successive laps, whereas in qualifying I think we can extract a bit more from our car, cover our weakness a bit more with fresh tyres on the car. With new tyres you can mask a little bit the problems here and there. So that would be just the straightforward, technical answer. To do better, I think we need to put things a little bit more together. I think we have all the ingredients; we have the people; we have the intelligence. So I think we just need to make sure things fall into place and once they do, I think things will start to click. Obviously Mercedes have proven in the last years that it is possible. I think they just got stronger and stronger throughout, which is credit to them as a team, credit to obviously Valtteri and Lewis, and in particular Lewis over the last years. They have shown what is possible, they are the benchmark and it’s up to us to do a better job in the future. Easily said, not so easily done but yeah, I think you also have to give credit where credit is due and both Mercedes and Lewis have been too strong in the last couple of years.

    Q: (Luis Vasconcelos – Formula Press) Questions for the Mercedes drivers. Valtteri, you managed to catch Sebastian pretty quickly at the start of the second stint. Twice you had DRS, didn’t seem to make any difference, what would you have needed to have been able to attack. And Lewis, this is the first time you had to deal with Alex Albon in a race. In the first 15 laps you were behind him, what impression did he make on you?

    VB: Yeah, got pretty good pace in the race in general, that was the feeling in general. Got close to Sebastian at a good rate. Sometimes got DRS, got close enough but I think mostly it was because of some backmarkers. Or he had a bit of a lock-up or something – but there was just not quite enough pace difference to make a move for the overtake. I was trying everything I could to get as close as I could but yeah, to get closer than 1.5s or one second is so tricky, and to overtake them, you need to be right in the gearbox, going to the main straight, because our speed on the straight is nearly the same when I have the DRS and they don’t. So, it was pretty impossible today and Sebastian didn’t really do any proper mistakes. So, that would have been needed, or massive help by backmarkers. There was no opportunities.

    Lewis, Alex Albon?

    LH: I don’t really remember a lot. He was obviously just in front of me for a while – and then he pitted, right? He was driving really well, not making any, or too many mistakes. I think this year has been… it’s a real challenge to go up against a driver that’s been spoken so highly of by so many people and built up onto a pedestal. And to come in so young, and with all the difficulties he’s had in his life as well – his life story is quite an interesting one – against all adversity. It was quite cool to just sit and view him for a second. He pitted very early, I’m not quite exactly sure why but they obviously then went onto the two-stop strategy and I didn’t really see him again after that. But he’s got a bright future ahead of him. I hope Red Bull give him the support over the years. It’s very, very important because they often spit drivers out pretty quick if they don’t always do the job. I hope they’re good to him.

    Q: (Alan Baldwin – Reuters) Lewis, this sport has American owners, they’re trying to grow the sport in America. You’re very much a household name in the United States, you’ve got a lot of friends there. How big a deal is it for you to win the title in America?

    LH: Honestly I hadn’t really thought about it. There is obviously an exciting market for me. The most important one for me is England. I’m constantly trying to grow with the fan base we have in the UK and I think the Silverstone Grand Prix is obviously spectacular but the US is getting more and more popular there. I’ve obviously done quite a few shows out there and definitely becoming more and more known in the States but it’s quite a diverse country. I think my story and my family’s story is something that a lot of people in different countries can relate to. America’s always a cool place to live. They do it their own way, it’s different. It’s not England with the British Grand Prix, which is so special in its own way. It’s not the Mexican Grand Prix which is … there were so many people here. It’s unbelievable. It’s its own unique amazing Grand Prix. The track is fantastic and it’s been a good hunting ground for me so very excited to go there and who knows whether we can get the job done, who knows? We’ll hopefully have a good race there.

    Q: (Jack Benyon – Autosport) Lewis, where do you rank that race in terms of your best of the season and also you mentioned adversity ; obviously Ferrari have been very strong since the summer break but this weekend you’ve been without your engineer as well so a lot of adversity to face. Could have you done that earlier in your career or is that something that’s come with experience to find that resolve and dig deep in races like that?

    LH: Experience naturally counts for a huge amount. Honestly I don’t remember every single race this year. I think we’ve had good races but it definitely feels like one of the better races that I’ve had, particularly with the things that were thrown at us at the beginning. And also with the build-up: knowing Bono wasn’t coming, I’m thinking, Jeez, in this intense fight for this championship… you could look at it as a disadvantage but me and Bono pulled together – he did a huge amount of work as did Marcus and Dom who’ve both stepped up into new roles. I’ve never worked so closely with Dom before and Marcus stepped into big shoes. It’s not easy to work alongside… I would say a World Champion in this sport, who generally demand quite a lot but because I have experienced him as my number two he kind of knew how it worked and he’s generally a very laid back individual. And then on top of that, Bono was on the radio, we were texting all weekend and I really just wanted to make him very proud this weekend. He’s devoted so much of his life to me for these seven years so yeah, I really wanted to do… I’m sure he’s happy with today’s race. I’d like to think that I can be really proud of today’s performance, particularly with the damaged car and the stuff we went through at the beginning. And what’s crazy is that I’ve – God knows how many races I’ve done, must be close to 300 races and it just never gets old and it always feels new. It’s a different journey each one, different emotions you go through in the gap before, you know. We had all the stuff last week with the media in terms of the stories that came out last week and then came to this week and an emotional rollercoaster and then obviously Bono’s not coming and then come to Mexico which is a very very hard race to win.. didn’t expect to win, that’s for sure but it’s a great great feeling, very humbling.

    Q: (Ben Hunt – The Sun) Lewis, just checking what your plans are now between these two races: do you lie low, do you have public appearances, do you have all that sort of stuff to worry about as well as obviously focusing on this championship that you can win at next time out?

    LH: Yeah, I head to the States. Me and Toto have an event together in Madison Square… Times Square, sorry, Times Square which is kind of cool. I think Valtteri’s going to do the thing in LA. Then I’ve a photoshoot and then I fly off to Austin, get there probably Thursday or something like that and then straight into the same kind of week but I get there tomorrow, I get into my normal training regime. Naturally I like being in the States so it’s a pretty calm build-up. Shouldn’t be a problem.

    Q: (Carlos Alberto Velazquez – Reforma News) Lewis, last three years you’ve celebrated here. Are you going to miss the celebration of the championship here in Mexico or do you miss Mexico as a place to celebrate?

    LH: Honestly I prefer the way it’s happened today, I think, as the previous times we’ve won here, championship-wise, I’ve finished like eighth or 13th or something crazy so you see someone else on the podium, celebrating a win but I’ve won a championship, so you’re a bit conflicted because you wanted to do better in the race  but you’ve got the overall job done. But today and this weekend, I knew it was unlikely that I was going to be able to win the championship here because Valtteri’s been driving so well but I just wanted to take it one race at a time, I wanted to try and win this race. It actually feels better than perhaps it’s felt in the past. We’ve still got more races to fight for so…

    Q: (Jonathan Chora – First Drive Mexico) Seb, what do you think was the main mistake for this race? And also, were you expecting a more exciting race here in Mexico?

    SV: I don’t think there were any major mistakes so as I tried to explain earlier I think we’ve done well. We tried everything so I don’t think it was a mistake that we are not as quick to make things happen and force things to happen.

    I think it was quite exciting. Obviously we always knew that it’s difficult to pass and have a lot of overtakes because of the nature of the track and being so critical on downforce, up in the altitude it’s very difficult to follow, sliding the tyres is what hurts us most and then to get closer is really really difficult. But I don’t know… the top four cars at the end, within four, five, six, seven seconds I believe. It definitely was very tense, I was hoping that in the last 15 laps to go, I was hoping that in the next five laps to close the gap and start a fight; ten laps to go I was hoping that in the next five laps I’m closing the gap. It was definitely tense but obviously Lewis drove well and didn’t make any mistakes and managed his race. I enjoyed it but would have obviously enjoyed more to have a bit of a fight at the end but we were just not quick enough to do so.

    Q: (Yhacbec Lopez – Motorlat) Lewis, you said last week that you thought the Mercedes power unit lacked power. Do you think the same today?

    LH: We haven’t changed anything so that is still an area that we… reliability has been fantastic through the year but it has been an area of less progress for us as we know. We see the Honda and the Ferrari really stepping up their game on the engine front so we’ve got work to do in that regard but the engine has done well this weekend, considering usually this a really tricky one for our engine, it has been ever since we’ve been coming here with the altitude for our turbo but I’m really happy with how it performed this weekend.

  • The track is very demanding as it is very difficult to get the tyres work: Sebastian Vettel

    The track is very demanding as it is very difficult to get the tyres work: Sebastian Vettel

    Saturday’s post-qualifying press conference in progress. Photo by Abhishek Aggarwal

    Mexico City, 26 Oct 2019: Replying to a question by INDIAinF1 correspondent, Abhishek Aggarwal, about the circuit being on the highest elevation prompting a changing strategy, former world champion Sebastian Vettel said it would be a big challenge at this track which is very demanding.  “First of all, we lose a lot of downforce despite running all the downforce that we have. So, as Max was saying, the cars are sliding a lot, very difficult to drive. So, that obviously leads on to tyres and tyre management. It will be very difficult to get the tyres to work and make the tyres last. The other one, obviously, with such thin air up here is to make sure you cool all of your components such as brakes, engine, oil,” he added and concluded saying: A bit of everything!

    The following drivers who qualified top-3 attended the drivers’ FIA Press Conference on Saturday:  Max Verstappen (Red Bull Racing), Charles Leclerc (Ferrari), and Sebastian Vettel (Ferrari). 

    TRACK INTERVIEWS (Conducted by Paul Di Resta)

    Q: Max, that’s an excellent pole position on a track that had Ferrari written over it in terms of top speed. You missed out on the narrow margins last year but you’ve got the job done and given yourself the best chance tomorrow.

    Max VERSTAPPEN: Yeah, it’s been quite an interesting day but of course to come out on top was incredible. Yeah, the last few races we know that Ferrari have been really quick on the straight but for us to come back like this and take pole position here, a big thank you to the team for that. They always kept pushing very hard. They kept bringing new parts to the car and it showed today that we are very quick.

    Q: Have you believed all weekend that you’ve had a car good enough for pole position?

    MV: Secretly you always hope and you always keep pushing. You try to find the right balance in the car and in Q3 that all came together.

    Q: And the start tomorrow? We know these Ferraris are quick down the straight, you’ve obviously got to defend there but you know what you’ve got to do based on last year.

    MV: Yeah, it will be a bit different for me, starting first instead of second on this track. We’re going to give it all. We have a good race car anyway so even if something happens in the start and we lose a position I think we are still fine.

    Q: Well done Max, nice to see you battling with the Ferraris. Charles, best of the rest I guess. Looked like the lap wasn’t going too bad until a small mistake right at the end of the lap on that last one.

    Charles LECLERC: Yeah, the first lap was quite good. The second one, we tried to put a bit more balance in the car to have a bit more front, which helped the first sector but then the last sector was too tricky and I lost the rear, so I lost all the time I made up in the first sector. But Red Bull was very quick. Max especially was extremely quick and the race is still long tomorrow.

    Q: I guess when you look in the distance there, you know you have a top speed advantage on these guys, you must be looking forward to the start and applying your strategy to try and optimise.

    CL: Yeah, definitely. The start will be very important but the top speed we have is very good so hopefully we can take advantage of this.

    Q: Sebastian, third place, I know you’re going to be disappointed with that. You’ve looked in very good shape all weekend, actually, and you were the king of the first sector but it looked like you struggled at the end of the lap?

    Sebastian VETTEL: Yeah, I had a mistake on my first run, so I was quite confident that in the second run I could make up for it. But unfortunately there was the double yellow so I had to slow down. So the lap was lost. But yeah, the car is good. Obviously I would have liked to be a bit further up, I think it was possible. But let’s see tomorrow. It’s a long race and I think we have the speed, as all weekend we have been quite quick.

    Q: You optimised that in Russia, which was a long run to the first braking zone. Do you still think you can get the business and do well tomorrow?

    SV: We’ll see. We hope to have a good start and then take it from there. Obviously it’s a long race, a tough one on brakes, cooling in general, so let’s see. Also with the tyres, I think it will be quite an adventure tomorrow. I think all top six cars opted to start on the medium tyre, so we will see who dares to go the longest. I’m looking forward to tomorrow.

    PRESS CONFERENCE

    Q: Max, sensational performance by you, well done. Just how tough was it out there to find the limit in those ever-changing conditions?

    MV: Well, I think it was just because the track is very slippery and it’s difficult to get the tyres working in the right window, so it all depends on your out lap and everybody is trying to be close to each other and in the last sector we are always slowing down but then you just hope that your tyres are working for Turn 1. This time it was all going well and from the start of qualifying the car was working like I wanted it to be. Of course very happy then in Q3 to get pole.

    Q: You said this morning that pole might be a step too far. Did the car exceed your expectations?

    MV: Yeah, maybe a little bit. I think compared to yesterday we even made a step forward, so that’s always good, that’s always positive, and like I said before, with the tyres, they were working well this time so that’s good.

    Q: Many congratulations and good luck for tomorrow. Charles, you’re starting on the front row for the sixth consecutive race. How happy were you with the performance of your Ferrari?

    CL: Very happy, especially in the first run of Q3, I think the car there was very good. In the second run of Q3 I asked for a bit more front and it was just too much for the last sector, so I lost all the time I made up in the first sector. But overall Max was just too quick today for us. But the race is tomorrow. We have got good straight-line speed, which I hope we can take advantage of at the start.

    Q: Were you surprised by the pace of the Red Bull?

    CL: Yes and no. I think we expected them to be strong. After FP3 maybe we thought we had a shot for pole and then in qualifying they were too quick. So a bit surprised in qualifying.

    Q: Sebastian, coming to you: on pole last time out in Suzuka, P3 today. How would you describe your session?

    SV: Overall I think it was good. But unfortunately in Q3 on the first run I had a mistake and the second run I was caught out by the yellow flags, so yeah, not ideal. I didn’t peak when it was time to peak in the sessions, especially in Q3. But other than that, the car felt good. I think there was more in hand. Obviously Max was a fair bit faster than us but I think with a clean lap we could have challenged him.

    Q: Looking ahead to the race, how big a factor will tyre management be?

    SV: Yeah, it will be the most important part of the race. Obviously we’ll see how everything gets going. I think everybody opted to start on the medium tyres. We’ll take it from there. Obviously it’s a long race around here.

    Questions from the floor:

    Q: (Scott Mitchell – Autosport) Max, what do you think made the difference here to previous races, to have this sort of performance in qualifying and how satisfying is it to hit back after a few near misses since the summer break?

    MV: Yeah, I think the last few races we have been really hurt of course on straight line speed and on most of the tracks you can’t gain enough in the corners compared to what you lose on the straights and I think here it’s still big but this track has very low grip so it’s not only aero, it’s also mechanical grip, which is a little bit more important and good kerb riding and stuff like that and I think traditionally our car has always been very good. We just made a mistake in Singapore with the set-up, otherwise I think we could have been really quick there as well. For us it didn’t work out there. We learned a lot from it and I think we came here with a car which was very well prepared already on the simulator, where I was very happy with it and basically we didn’t need to change too much on the track and it was working.

    Q: (Fréd Ferret – l’Equipe) Question for all three of you. Do you think that the first straight line will be as at Sochi and how will you deal with the tow?

    MV: Well, just look at the last tow year. I guess that says enough.

    CL: Yeah, this time I won’t be starting on pole, second, so hopefully I can take the tow from Max and have an opportunity, but yeah, the start will be important for sure.

    SV: Nothing to add.

    MV: You will have a mega tow.

    SV: We’ll see.

    Q: (Lawrence Edmondson – ESPN) Max, it looked like you set a fastest final sector despite the accident of Bottas. Can you explain whether you backed off or if you were aware of it, if you saw the yellow flags coming into that corner.

    MV: I was aware that Valtteri crashed.

    Did you back off?

    MV: It didn’t really look like it, did it? No.

    Q: (Abhishek Aggarwal – INDIAinF1.com) Sebastian, as we know at this track, in the whole calendar it’s at the highest elevation above sea-level – 2.5km – Do you think there could be something like the thin air changing strategy for tomorrow’s race – comparing it to other circuits?

    SV: Well, it is a big challenge around here because obviously it’s a very demanding track for the car. First of all we lose a lot of downforce despite running all the downforce that we have. So, as Max was saying, the cars are sliding a lot, very difficult to drive. So, that obviously leads on to tyres and tyre management. It will be very difficult to get the tyres to work and make the tyres last. The other one, obviously, with such thin air up here is to make sure you cool all of your components such as brakes, engine, oil. A bit of everything.

    Q: (Jaap De Groot – Het Parool Amsterdam) Question for Max. Starting now on the pole position, new challenge according to the situation at the first turn. The last year you took a profit out of it form the second position. You see that also as a challenge to keep pole position?

    MV: We’ll find out tomorrow. I’m not too worried about it. If they drive by, it’s fine – then we have a good race.

    Q: Yeah, but the last two races that you won were decided in the first turn.

    MV: Yep, that’s true. Let’s do it a bit different this time!

    Q: (Christian Menath – motorsport-magazin.com) Question for all three of you. Usually you all love the downforce, you all love the cornering speed here, it’s quite different. We will get a presentation of the new regulations next weekend. We don’t know exactly what we expect – but would you be happy to lose a bit of downforce in the future? Because for us as a TV viewer it looks quite spectacular to see the cars sliding a lot in the fast corners.

    SV: I think as a one-off it’s nice, so obviously if we lose a lot of downforce for all the tracks it would mean that we lose a lot more up here as well. So, yeah, I think it’s always exciting to have fast cars. I think people also on the grandstand see if the cars are slow, hence, I think the trend to go towards faster cars with the regulations to go with faster cars from ’17 onwards – but I’m sure that we are all ready to go a little bit slower as long as it’s a step forward for all of us in terms of racing. If not, then obviously it’s not really what we want.

    MV: Yeah, I think that the cars are really quick at the moment and I don’t think you can find a way of following in a better way with the same cornering speeds like we have now, so I think we do have to go a bit slower but, of course, I do not want to go four, five seconds slower. Maybe two, two-and-a-half maximum. Stuff like that. The car will still be very impressive through the corners. And anyway, whenever you drive on the limit, it’s always very hard, so if it’s going two seconds faster, slower, doesn’t really matter. I think at the end of the day it’s more important that we can actually race instead of just be there and can’t do anything.

    Q: Max, do you enjoy the car when it’s producing less downforce, like here?

    MV: Well, I enjoy this car more, of course – but for sure we’ll find a way of making that car enjoyable as well.

    Charles?

    CL: I agree. The feeling in qualifying with this much downforce on the cars is just amazing and I love driving that way. But yeah, as Max said, we’ll need to sacrifice a little bit of that to have better racing. We just need to find the right balance it between cutting the speeds and trying to follow.

    Q: (Michael Schmidt – Auto Motor und Sport) Max, today you lost only two-tenths on the Ferrari on the first sector, yesterday it was more than double. Any explanation for that?

    MV: I think we improved the car again a little bit and yeah, maybe yesterday was not the perfect sector one – but of course you always know you can improve, or you try, at least. And yeah, today it was just working a little bit better.

    Q: (Carlos Alberto Velázquez – Reforma) Question for Max. It’s your second pole it will be your third win here in Mexico. Wouldn’t Mexico be your best race track in your life, in Formula One. It will be your favourite for you?

    MV: No. I don’t think you can change your favourite track. Since I was a kid it was always Spa and it’s still the same. But I always love coming here. It’s different, y’know. Of course we have some tracks where we can do really fast through corners and have a lot of grip. This is the opposite. It’s still quite technical and you have to be really focussed on trying to hit the apexes well and trying to make the tyres work, which is a bit different to some other tracks, which I like. And yes, it’s been good to me in the past. It’s definitely not a bad track for me.

    Q: (Fernando Alonso – motorlat.com) Charles, I don’t know if we’ll lose the chance for a really tight fight in quali and do you think this will be translated to the race, to have a very close fight between the Red Bull and Ferrari?

    CL: Red Bull and, again, Max especially, was very quick yesterday in the FP2 long runs. So it’s going to be difficult but I think anything is possible if we take an advantage at the start. I think there are quite big problems for cooling for everyone, so it’s very difficult to follow around this track. So yeah, we’ll have to take the opportunity in Turn One is we have it.

    Q: Sebastian, do you think you’ll be closer to Red Bull in race trim?

    SV: Well, I think we were very close today. Maybe closer than the stopwatch was telling. So, I think it was a match and I hope it’s… I’m quite confident it’s going to be a match as well. Obviously it depends on how the race unfolds but also I would not rule out Mercedes.

    Q (Scott Mitchell – Autosport) To all three please. Just to go back to Valtteri’s crash and the yellow flag at the end of Q3. Is it clear among drivers and with the rulemakers what you can get away with, with a yellow flag – and also is it realistic to expect you to back off all that much in qualifying when all that’s on the line?

    CL: Yeah, of course, I think it’s clear for everyone that when there’s a yellow flag you need to slow down. On my side, the crash was behind, so I cannot judge that situation but yeah, I think it’s clear for every driver. It’s the basics.

    Anything more you’d like to say on this topic Max?

    MV: No, I think we all know what a yellow flag means.

    Q: (Lawrence Edmondson – ESPN) Why didn’t you back off then, if you saw the yellow?

    MV: Well, it doesn’t matter, does it?

    Q: Well it might, if the FIA look into it.

    MV: Well, then delete my lap. The second. The other lap was fine as well.

    Q: Not from a safety perspective? Any concerns?

    MV: Do we have to go there? To safety? I think we know what we are doing – otherwise we would not be driving an F1 car. It’s qualifying and, yeah, you go for it. But like I said before, if they want to delete the lap, then delete the lap.

  • It is a special week-end for me, say Sergio Perez

    It is a special week-end for me, say Sergio Perez

    Thursday FIA press conference in progress. An FIA image

    Mexico City, 24 Oct 2019: The following drivers attended the FIA Thursday press conference ahead of the Mexican GP. Antonio Giovinazzi (Alfa Romeo), Sebastian Vettel (Ferrari), Sergio Perez (Racing Point), Lewis Hamilton (Mercedes) and Alexander Albon (Red Bull Racing).

    PRESS CONFERENCE

    Q: Sergio, home race coming up. How has the build up been? I think you’ve been busy running marathons, a taxi service, all sorts of things?

    SERGIO PÉREZ: A little one – 8 km. Yeah, it’s been a busy one. Basically I’ve been doing everything, every single stuff out there. It’s a pretty special weekend for me. I think it’s the best grand prix on the calendar, but very special for me. Yeah, I’m just looking forward to it. If there’s a weekend I want to be perfect and do very well, it’s this weekend.

    Q: Well if you do very well, you might record the 100th points finish of your career this weekend. What would it mean for you to do that in front of your home crowd?

    SP: It would be very special. More than that I look forward to giving them a great race. I think last year we were doing a very good race but then we ran out of brakes, so I think in the past we’ve been a bit unlucky in a couple of races – one in 2015 with the safety car that came at the wrong moment – so I hope this weekend… we are in a good run, so hopefully we can do a good one this weekend.

    Q: Thanks very much and good luck Checo. Alex, Suzuka two weeks ago was a tremendous weekend for you, culminating in fourth place, the best result of your Formula 1 career to date. Did you change anything going into the Japanese Grand Prix or was it more of a reflection of the general progress you’ve been making?

    ALEXANDER ALBON: I think it was more of a reflection. I don’t think anything special went on before Japan. Just getting more comfortable every time. Japan was just a really good track; I love it. I just enjoyed it and it suited me a bit better. It was a good weekend.

    Q: You say you’re getting comfortable all the time. How different is the Red Bull to drive compared to the Toro Rosso you did the first half of the season in?

    AA: Yeah, I’d say they have their differences, obviously. But it’s like every car. I think you’ve got to learn its little tricks and everything like that. Spending that time with Toro Rosso you kind of develop a bit of a driving style towards it and changing teams you’ve got to almost start blank again and work again, so it does take time but it’s very normal for every time you change to a new car.

    Q: Your team-mate has won this grand prix for the last couple of years. How confident are you coming into the weekend that you can get your first podium?

    AA: We’ll see. Maybe we’re not as favorites as we were in previous years. We do have our success here but the Ferraris are looking very strong as always, so we’ll see. On my side, just focus on myself. A podium would be nice, obviously, but not too focused on that at the minute. We’ll see.

    Q: Thank you Alex, good luck this weekend. Antonio, you’re enjoying a good run at the moment, you’ve outqualified Kimi Räikkönen for the last three races. A question that’s quite similar to the one I asked Alex: have you changed anything in your approach to qualifying in particular?

    Antonio GIOVINAZZI: No, I don’t think so. I think already in the first part of the season I was really close to Kimi, always really there. Second part, yeah, the confidence was coming better and better. But I don’t think it’s something we need to talk about – I was in front of Kimi three times. I’m just really happy that my confidence is coming better and better. The speed is better. I think we are struggling a little bit on race pace now. I hope we can find the right way this weekend and come back [into the] points, so we miss from two races already, so we need to get back there.

    Q: How confident are you of finding the right way, because both Alfas were in Q3 here last year and raced well, so do you think you are going to have a better weekend than you have had at the last couple?

    AG: I hope so. We had an intensive week last weekend and we tried to find something in the car, because I think the car is fast, because in qualifying we are there, almost close to Q3, but in the race we are struggling a lot, so I think we need to find just the last detail and then try to be back in the points soon.

    Q: You’re doing a great job at the minute, what have the team told you about next year?

    AG: Nothing yet. I think I just need to focus on my job and try to continue like that and then we’ll see for next year.

    Q: Are you confident?

    AG: Yes, I need to be confident. I think the second part of the season was quite strong from my side. I need to just keep pushing like that and then we’ll see.

    Q: Good luck, thank you Antonio. Sebastian, tremendous pole position by you in Japan a couple of weeks ago. How much did you enjoy that moment and how much did you need that moment for your own peace of mind?

    Sebastian VETTEL: Not so much. Obviously we had both quali and the race on Sunday, so there was not so much time to enjoy. I think there was nothing wrong before. Obviously, qualifying, maybe some events before that didn’t really go my way but yeah, I enjoyed Suzuka more than that particularly qualifying session. Obviously it was a good day, a near perfect day, the race should have been a little bit better but yeah…

    Q: This weekend, are Ferrari favourites coming into this Mexican Grand Prix?

    SV: I don’t know. So-so. Obviously people look at the track and they look at the straight line but I think that, yeah, we have obviously been strong on the straight lines in recent races but there are a couple of corners plus here it’s not one of the tracks where efficiency matters so much. We do have quite an efficient car but maybe we can’t use that to our advantage, so we’ll see how we manage around the ‘cornery’ sections, because some of these type of corners have been our weakness, so we’ll see.

    Q: OK, good luck with that. Lewis, we talked about Checo’s busy build-up to this weekend and I see that you have been in the boxing ring with Julio Chávez. Tell us about it?

    Lewis HAMILTON: Yeah, I was with Puma yesterday at an event. We had a great turnout. It’s crazy; I started boxing when I was eight. Obviously I was much younger and I wouldn’t say In was particular ever great at it, but it was really quite an honour to be in the ring with such a legend.

    Q: Did he teach you anything?

    LH: Yeah, yeah, he gave me a few pointers. He said I had a heavy hand, so I don’t know…

    SP: Ready for the fight!

    Q: Let’s talk about the fight this weekend then. It’s been six races since you last had a pole position. How confident are you of breaking that run this weekend?

    LH: Oh, I don’t think a lot has changed. We’re going to go into this weekend knowing that Ferrari are massively quick usually on the straights and obviously straights are a powerful element of this circuit, so I don’t know when we’ll be getting another pole – unless it rains, which can change everything. But as you’ve seen in previous races it’s not necessarily all about qualifying nowadays. It’s about making sure you’ve got the car ready for the race, so we’ll still give it everything. This is a race that bodes well for the Red Bulls and the Ferraris in the past, but we’ve made a lot of improvements in our understanding of the car and how we use it, so maybe this weekend maybe we’ll a better chance than we have in the past.

    Q: Looking ahead to Sunday’s race, you will clinch the world championship if you beat Valtteri Bottas by 14 points. What would it mean to you to win it here in Mexico for the third consecutive season?

    LH: Well, I don’t remember if in a season I’ve finished 14 points ahead of Valtteri at any point, and if it has it may have been one race maybe. So I anticipate that it will be a difficult weekend. Valtteri has been strong all year and obviously won the last race so I expect him to be strong this weekend too. It doesn’t matter where it’s done, as long as you get it done, and that’s what I’m trying to do. But I’m fully aware that there are still plenty of points on the table and I’ve got to deliver over these next four races.

    Questions from the floor

    Q: (Scott Mitchell – Autosport) For Lewis: you’ve never been afraid to use your profile on social media to raise issues you have outside F1, what you think about the world etc, so you made people take notice in between Japan and here with your comments about the state of the planet and what people can do. I think that led to a few people questioning whether it’s valid to raise concerns about the planet if you’re part of the F1 circus, with all the travelling and stuff. I think even Fernando Alonso was quoted as saying it’s not something you can comment on really, because it’s not fair. I just wondered how you balance using your personal profile to raise stuff like that with the role you have in F1? A second part: Jean-Eric Vergne, the Formula E champion, said Formula E would be a natural move for you, given your eco-friendly status and what the championship is trying to do. Are you interested in doing Formula E after Formula 1?

    LH: I have no interest whatsoever to do Formula E, so that’s not something I currently plan to do beyond. And then, lots of people have had opinions about how I utilise my social media, but ultimately it’s my platform and we all have a voice, everyone here and around the world, and it’s how you choose to… how you want to use it. Personally, it’s not the easiest, because yes, we are travelling around the world, we are racing Formula 1 cars and our carbon footprint for sure is higher than the average homeowner who lives in the same city, but that doesn’t mean that you should be afraid to speak out about things that can be a positive change and I’m always looking at things, and how I can improve the effect that I’m having on the world. I guess it’s something that over time I have become more and more aware of and it takes a while. It’s not a quick-fix thing. It takes time to understand the implications and I think it’s just about education and I’m just trying to highlight areas. Whether people choose to look into those, that’s up to them, but I’d feel like I wasn’t doing anything positive if I didn’t mention it.

    Q: (Dieter Rencken – Racing Lines / racefans.net) I had a very similar question to Lewis, so obviously it’s been answers. So, to the other drivers there, how do you feel about the environmental factors that Lewis has raised on social media. Are you also sort of active about the environment?

    SV: Yeah. I’m not following Lewis. I’m not active on social media but I think the point is very clear. I think you would be ignorant if you wouldn’t look at it and obviously, as Lewis mentioned, it’s very difficult, in a way, to us to get acceptance from outside, because we don’t have the smallest footprint because the races happen around the world. We do have to travel, so it’s part of our jobs. But I think in general, Formula 1 should do more. It’s a worldwide operating platform. I think we should send a much stronger message regarding this subject and I think personally – this is free to everyone – but I think everybody can do something, contribute a little bit and if the whole world would act like that, it would make a huge difference. I think it’s inevitable that change is coming and hopefully rather sooner than later.

    Antonio?

    AG: I completely agree with Seb, what he says. So nothing to add.

    Checo?

    SP: Yeah, I think it’s very important that we raise our voices. A lot of people hear us – especially for someone like Lewis. It’s very important. I see the messages that he sends often on his social media are good. A lot of people are following him, so if we can impact the world, if we can help a bit, I think we are obliged to do so. I don’t see anything wrong with that.

    Alex?

    AA: Not to much to add to that. I think what Lewis said was really good and… yeah, just because we’re in Formula 1 doesn’t mean we can’t care about the environment.

    Q: (Phil Duncan – PA) Lewis, just on those Instagram posts. In one of them you said you feel like giving up on everything and shutting down completely. I was just wondering what provoked you to say that and how your frame of mind is going into this weekend.

    LH: Well, I’m only human so, like everyone you have up and down days. I think that’s really what I’ve been trying to convey really, because I think it’s very difficult for people who are watching on social media to be able to relate to certain individuals who live in a celebrity world. A lot of people don’t realise that they’re also humans and they also have feelings and have the ups and downs. Some people do care, some people care less, or whatever. And… I don’t know. It was not the best feeling at the moment but I’ve got great people around me, I’ve had a lot of support from fans, I’ve had a lot of support from around my family. There’s a lot going on in my life at the moment and, I don’t know, I think I was just… well, anyway, coming into this weekend I feel very positive, back to doing what I love doing and… yeah, I think it’s just always trying to stay positive, which is not always easy but I think I’ve done really well in the past to stay positive for the majority of the time – but I think there’s a lot that goes on in our lives and I think it’s important to also be open. And the whole thing’s in… so I’m always very open, very transparent with my feelings, whether people like it or not but I’m super-focused still on these four races and what I can do to get the job done, as the team have done such a great job and I continue. I’ve got lots and lots of positive plans for the future for positive change.

    Q: (Christian Nimmervoll – motorsport-total.com) Following up on the environmental issue, are you guys political. And the question is to all drivers – and I’m not asking if you have sentiments for any political party or anything – but do you support a party, not telling us who it is probably, do you care, do you follow the news, would you say you are political persons.

    AA: No, not so much. Is that OK?

    LH: I don’t think I’m particularly political. I watch the news as much as I can. I find it very interesting to watch what is happening around the world. I think it’s a scary time for all of us. There’s so much talk in all the different governments around the world and there doesn’t seem to be a lot of solutions, or they don’t seem to be coming up with a lot of solutions, so it definitely is a bit worrying but there’s not a lot that we can do individually except for just try to be better within our own bubble. And if you have a platform, try to project some positivity – but I’m not supportive of any particular party.

    Checo?

    SP: Nothing more to add to what Lewis said.

    SV: I think it’s not so much about knowing which party you want to support. I think, when you talk about the environment, supporting the planet. So, I think politics in a way have failed in the past, and at the moment we have seen, or we see in different areas that is critical and hopefully they will manage to get their act together and succeed in trying to find solutions that will help our planet and will help other problems that we have amongst ourselves, as in human beings, to try and improve the situation. In that regard I’m a supporter of the planet and, again, as I said earlier, I think change is coming. So I think it’s up to us to embrace it rather than ignore it before probably it’s too late.

    AG: Nothing too much to add.

    Q: (Rebecca Clancy – The Times) Lewis, sorry to come back to the Instagram post. It’s already been mentioned about the criticism you received on the back of some of it. I just wondered how you deal with that, because obviously you’re trying to put out a positive message and people then come back with their own views on that. Does it ever get to you and how do you get over it?

    LH: I don’t normally spend a lot of time reading comments but of course I’m aware of that people have their own opinions and some people are going to be with it, some people are going to be against it. And that’s just the name of the game. I generally try not to let that kind of thing get to me. I think it’s important for all of us in life to feel good and feel like you’re doing something positive regardless of those that try to knock it down, the stuff that you do do that is positive. And yeah… just staying true to your values and that’s what I’ve been trying to do. And, as I said, I’ve got great people around me who are constantly lifting me up. So, there’s no… I’m fortunately not alone. I’ve got a lot of great people around me who, within my team, within my closest friends and family. Not all my family’s vegan but it doesn’t matter. They are also trying to make positive change in the decisions they make in their lives and I think that’s great.

    Q: (Fernando Alonso – motorlat.com) Sebastian, right now we talk about the things that help Ferrari with the motor upgrades but you already said that you have to focus on the slow corners. You as a team are thinking in balance all the performance in the track or what is the way you will approach this weekend?

    SV: Well, obviously for this weekend here it’s quite straightforward. Normally you think about the downforce choice you make – so trying to find the right balance whereas here obviously you put the maximum downforce on the car that you can, because of the difference in altitude and the air being thinner, so, as I said previously, the efficiency around this track is not so important. And yeah, to focus on the low speed corners in particular around here, other than trying to put every single bit of downforce on the car that you have, is trying to find the right set-up, finding the right balance, in terms of obviously extracting grip – but on the other hand, finding the right handling, the confidence in the car, looking after the tyres, getting the tyres in the window and all these small things. They do make a big difference for one lap in quali – but also then how you treat the tyres, especially throughout the race.

    Q: (Giles Richards – The Guardian) Lewis, you are very close to taking your sixth title, largely because you’ve had a such a strong season. Would you just consider how you got to this position? Are you able to identify what has been the most difficult challenges you’ve had to overcome, to be in such a strong position now?

    LH: I think every season you’re looking at it… obviously we got to the beginning of the year and people thought we were talking ourselves down and not showing our true performance. In actual fact it was the reality. Ferrari had a good car at the beginning, perhaps it just wasn’t working that great earlier on in the season. I think our focus is just always trying to… the biggest challenges are always trying to understand these tyres. I think everyone has been on that case each year and there’s quite a different dynamic to them this season. So if you look at qualifying, for example, I think that’s an area which has probably been my weakest, even though I feel like I’ve been doing good laps but they’ve not been as good as others. I think the races have obviously been stronger and continued, I guess, on from last year but been very, very strong this season. But then I guess it’s also just been the balance of everything you’re doing outside of the sport, the obstacles you come across in the build-up to the races and just remaining consistent. Punching out these performances each weekend in, weekend out for us guys it’s such a hard task and I think people underestimate and undervalue how hard that is. Perhaps other athletes would understand because they go to competition after competition but it’s really hard because people turn on the TV and see a few hours of our weekend but there’s a massive amount of work that goes on obviously in the background, which you guys will know, obviously and I think it’s really just trying to continue to make… keep the team motivated, steering them in the right direction – because they can easily go in the wrong direction quite often with these cars nowadays.

    Q: (Ben Hunt – The Sun) Sorry to go back to the environmental stuff Lewis. You mentioned that your post came as a result of a down, a period that you mentioned highs and lows. Was there a particular moment that you can share with us which was the trigger for putting that statement out? And just as a follow-up; what sort of changes have you made to your day-to-day life to help the environment? I know there’s the diet but diet aside is there anything else which you’re doing which you can tell us?

    LH: I was watching a documentary and it was just sad to see the things that we are kind of not aware of. Again, it just inspired me to want to do more and reach out to those who perhaps don’t know some of the things that are happening. In terms of the things that I’m doing in my life, I’m trying to make sure that by the end of the year I’m carbon neutral at the end of the year. I don’t allow anyone in my office but also within my household to buy any plastics. I want everything recyclable down to deodorant, down to toothbrush, all these kind of things so I’m trying to make as much change as I can in my personal space. I told you I sold my plane over a year ago. I fly a lot less now, I’m trying to fly less through the year and mostly flying commercial so that’s been a big change in my habits. I’ve avoided trips as well, if I didn’t need to do it, been in the UK, for example, with family and going up to Bedfordshire and kind of stayed at Soho House for example, with the family instead of going on holiday. What else? Obviously I’ve changed my diet which is quite a drastic difference. I’m also pushing for… so for example I have a new smart electric hybrid at home – it’s not hybrid, it’s electric. I’ve sold several of my cars, some of them I don’t really want to sell because I still love them and I’ve worked hard for them and I don’t drive them a lot if I’m honest. And also, all the cars that I have, so Mercedes, I’m very fortunate that I get quite a few cars around the world, so I have three Mercedes in the States for example. Send them back and get new QCs. I have a Maybach in London for example. I think they’re bring the hybrid out at the end of next year for the Maybachs. However, right now that doesn’t really suit what I’m fighting for so I need to change that also for either an EQC or one of the hybrids they have. I’m constantly making changes. It’s not a quick fix. It’s not something you do over a short period of time, but I feel (Indistinct) that I’m making those changes  and I’m encouraging people around me to also… my friends are seeing me doing those and also being more conscious and also looking to do those kind of things. I work with the team who are also really pushing to be carbon neutral, also changing things in their canteen because there’s a lot of plastics which you will see here, for example, we have mostly just water which are biodegradable bottles. I’m working with Mercedes on the future plan with them, for example. Car manufacturers have all leather interiors. There’s no reason why we cannot have for the leather for the suede so I’m pushing to be a part of that change with Mercedes Benz. And what’s the last one? There’s one more. Oh yes, and obviously I work with Tommy Hilfiger, nearly 70 per cent of all the clothes that I’ve done are sustainable and either recycled fabrics of leather, faux suede and the goal is to have that 100 percent and I’m looking at some point that to be 100 per cent sustainable, hopefully in the next year or two. That’s also encouraged Tommy Hilfiger, who work in quite a damaging business or industry to also look into that and push that direction. I don’t know much more I can do at the moment. I still love racing and I want to continue with that. If you look at our sport, it’s shifted from… we use a third less fuel now, there is more I think that Formula One can do and I think they are putting plans together but I think we have to push all the industries, you have to push Formula One to do more and I think that they’re giving us a proposal later on, I think today, of the plans that they have in place and we’ll do whatever we can to support that.

    Q: (Yhacbec López – Motorlat) Seb, Ferrari has not won here, the Mexican Grand Prix, since 1990 so is this the biggest chance since F1 came back in 2015 to win the Mexican Grand Prix finally?

    SV: I don’t know. I think we can answer on Sunday. If yes, then hopefully we can make it happen; if no then we obviously come back again next year. Yeah, I can’t predict what’s going to happen. I feel confident, I think we have a strong package. There’s part of the track that should be in our favour. Other parts might be a bit more difficult but we will see how it works out. The weather could be a bit of a difficult role this weekend so we will see what happens.

    Q: (Arturo Escalona – Compania Periodistica ESTO) I would like to know your opinion about three more years of the Mexican Grand Prix? 

    SP: Well, those were great news for our country, for Formula One. I think Formula One is looking to have more races like Mexico. We don’t have that many where we go there and the fans are cheering – not just for me but for everyone up there. It’s just something that’s extremely good to have and you see places like Monza, England, those unique places that are, for us, very special so for me especially, it was extremely good to hear that the Mexican Grand Prix is for another three years, especially as it has grown so much in the past. Now can you say Formula One is very big in Mexico so I hope it carries on not just three years, more than that.

    LH: Oh great. I love coming to Mexico so it’s good for me. I think Mexico City is… Mexico in general has such a beautiful culture, the people have always been so warm and welcoming. I’ve got friends from when I lived in Switzerland who are still my dear friends today. And also I spend a lot of time in Colorado for example, a lot of the Mexicans are out there skiing with us. But this Grand Prix, it’s very very unique, obviously with the high altitude that we have here, it always put a huge demand on the drivers but also the cars. I didn’t think when we came here for the first time that we would have such a big turn-out consistently each year. I think it’s getting bigger each time they come and the atmosphere is really created by the people that come here, the people who come and support us. I see no reason for this Grand Prix to ever stop. The only thing I hope is that we can try to make sure that when we do come to these Grands Prix and we leave, we will leave a positive (indistinct) on the city in some way, shape or form, whether it’s working with certain foundations. Because I know there’s a lot of people in need within the city and within the country so I think there’s more we can do.

    SV: Yeah, I think it’s great to continue going to a Grand Prix where there’s passion for racing. I think that since we’ve come back – I don’t know how it was when Ferrari last won in 1990, how it was before, but certainly since we’ve been coming back since 2015 it’s been very positive, lots of people, full grandstands. It’s not the case everywhere we go so we should be very happy about the fact that we are allowed to come back.

    AG: Of course it will be my first time here but I did two FP1 in ’17 and ’18. The track is really nice to drive and we always see a really good race here. Also like the other say, the passion here is quite high, so really happy to continue to race here.

    AA: Yeah, first time here so excited. I’ve loved the food already: spicy and excited. Coming into the stadium is supposed to be really special so I’m excited to see that on Sunday.

  • Safety first forces Saturday cancellation and team reps agree

    TEAM REPRESENTATIVES – Guenther STEINER (Haas), Mattia BINOTTO (Ferrari), Toyoharu TANABE (Honda), Cyril ABITEBOUL (Renault), Frédéric VASSEUR (Alfa Romeo)

    Q: Tomorrow’s programme has been called due to the typhoon. Can we get your thoughts on that decision and could you explains how it has affected your programme today. Perhaps we can start with Fred?

    Frédéric VASSEUR: I think that it’s safety first and probably it makes no sense to ask the spectators to come on track and then to be in a big mess. In terms of schedule and programme for the team. We already thought about this yesterday evening honestly. OK, it will change the programme but I think we can afford the weekend with two free practices. Perhaps it will be a good exercise for the future.

    Q: Thank you. Cyril?

    Cyril ABITEBOUL: Well, nothing really to add. It has happened before and it will happen in the future. There is enough time on Sunday to conduct both qualifying and the race. I think maybe it will give us an impression of Formula E, maybe a little bit, so not a bad thing. That’s for my neighbor on the left, and on the right.

    Q: Tanabe-san?

    Toyoharu TANABE: First, I’m sorry to the fans willing to be here Saturday, but in terms of our programme we will just prepare for the qualifying and the race this afternoon and then maybe analyse the data and then ready for the qualifying on Sunday and the race.

    Q: Mattia?

    Mattia BINOTTO: I would join certainly his comment, as first I think it’s a shame for the fans but it’s a fully respectable decision, safety is first. In terms of programmes, certainly it’s a lot more intense now. We are certainly skipping one session, which is FP3. Qualifying may be occurring on Sunday morning. But it means that today it will be a lot more intense. We’ve got, eventually, more tyres to be used – the ones from FP3. We need to set up the car for the Quali on Sunday morning. There’s just a session less. Things are more complicated but certainly a great challenge but I’m pretty sure it should be a good show and spectacle on Sunday.

    Q: Guenther?

    Guenther STEINER: Nothing to add from a sporting side. I think it was the right decision from the organisers, safety is first, and the rest is set.

    Q: Thank you gentlemen. Tanabe-san, if I could come back to you, please? It’s always special to race here at Suzuka and Honda has a good chance of getting a good result this weekend. How exciting is it to be in that situation?

    TT: Yes, it is a very special race. The Japanese Grand Prix is our home race, and then the Suzuka circuit is owned by Honda. All Japanese fans are willing it to have a good result from Honda-powered cars. On the other hand, it’s kind of pressure for us, but fans give us more power. In terms of the weekend preparation, the setting is the same as the other races. So, we just set up the PU accordingly and do our best.

    Q: Can we get a word too on the performance of Naoki Yamamoto this morning in the Toro Rosso. He was only one tenth slower than Dany Kvyat. How would you assess his performance today?

    TT: Considering it’s his first run on a grand prix weekend I think he did a good job. Comparing the lap time against Dany is a bit difficult because they are doing different strategy in the practice. But he did a decent job for the team to set up the car in the first session of the weekend and then his run today will definitely encourage Japanese young drivers. So, thank you Toro Rosso and Red Bull and it’s good for the Japanese fans as well.

    Q: Thank you. Fred, coming back to you: there are five races left this year, so when you look back at this season, has it been a success?

    FV: It was a really up and down season. We had the first four or five races where we scored a lot of points and then we had a bad momentum around Monaco and Barcelona and then we went back. The last four races were very difficult. It’s up and down. But let’s see in the last five if it’s up and hopefully the last five will be OK.

    Q: What can you do to level out the performances?

    FV: It’s small things and small details honestly. If you compare with Sochi that we were, with Antonio, we were P13 in Quali but we were two tenths off compared to P7 in Q2 and it’s very, very tight and for small details sometimes you can be completely out of the classification but we have to take care when you are doing the analysis. But it’s true also that we made too many mistakes over the last three or four weekends – teams, drivers, everyone in the same basket – but at the end of the day we have to wake up a little bit and to come back to the pace and top score points in the last four events.

    Q: And how has the experience of Kimi Räikkönen helped the team?

    FV: He’s staying calm. He’s not a big nervous. I think it’s good also for us to stay focused on the real issue and not to start to try to go in every single direction. We know what did wrong on the last two or three events and I hope that we will be able to correct it for Suzuka and the next ones, and that’s it.

    Q: Guenther, if we could come to you now please. In Russia, Kevin Magnussen scored his first points since the German Grand Prix. What aero was he running on his car that weekend and is that the direction going forward?

    Guenther STEINER: I don’t know what aero he was running because we are mixing it up a little bit. There is no definitive spec what we could call it. It’s a hybrid, we call it and, going forward, in the moment we are on a very similar spec like we had in Russia. Going forward, we test a few things and I cannot tell you what we do in the next race because we just try to get better and get a better understanding so we are not in this position next year. But, I mean, it seemed to be working a little bit better in Russia. So, let’s hope we can find a few more points on our way to the end of the season.

    Q: Knowing what you know now, what would you have done differently with the development of this year’s car?

    GS: A lot. It’s like… I don’t want to go into the specifics of technical stuff but we should have listened a little bit more to the drivers when they gave their opinion about what the car is doing and whatnot. And sometimes listen more to drivers than look at numbers. That’s what we have to learn out of this. And now I think we need to get what drivers say correlated with what the numbers say and get an understanding so we can move forward. As I said, we would have done a lot different from Barcelona onwards.

    Q: Cyril, tell us about the progress with your car, particularly this weekend, and what feedback you’ve had from your drivers about the new front wing?

    Cyril ABITEBOUL: It’s as always when you bring this type of parts, in particular with these current regulations, it’s a very sensitive part. I think everyone here would say the same thing. So, it always takes a little bit of time to understand properly, to measure, we’ve done a number of back-to-back tests. The guys are currently looking at the data at the factory – and also listening to drivers, Guenther, we are also doing that – and no, there is nothing really bad but I think there is more to come in pace and in balance in particular. But this is a very complex area of development of the car. It’s highly loaded so it creates some instability. It’s complex.

    Q: Can you tell us any more about what the drivers were saying about the car this morning?

    CA: I don’t want to go into specifics but I think the balance was not exactly where it was supposed to be, so we need to review that in particular, make sure that the data do back up what they were experiencing on track. And if that does, we’ll be making some set-up change in FP2 to see if we can indeed get it to work a bit better.

    Q: OK, and looking a bit further ahead, it looks like you won’t be supplying any customer teams in 2021. How will that impact on your power unit development?

    CA: In particular for next year there is no impact because the engine for next year is done, it’s on the dyno already, you know that it’s a long lead-time development, so nothing is going to impact what we are doing for 2020. It’s going to impact what we could be doing for 2021 on the basis that, when you have multiple customers, in particular the way that Renault is doing it, we always try to satisfy everyone to take on board all the comments in terms of installation, and so on and so forth, so that will be one less distraction. We will be able to focus on ourselves and just on ourselves. And that’s it. From an economic perspective, there is absolutely no impact and nothing in it, because we sell, more or less, at a cost. Due to the price cap limitation. So, frankly, it’s nothing, that it’s good news, because, you know, it’s always satisfying to see your product being used by multiple teams but in terms of what we need to achieve and deliver for Renault it has absolutely no impact.

    Q: Mattia, we understood from Charles yesterday that you spoke to both drivers in Maranello last week. How confident are you that another situation like the one we saw in Russia won’t arise again?

    Mattia BINOTTO: First, it’s not the first time we are speaking in Maranello. It’s true that I met both of them this week, they were in Maranello for some activities: simulator etc., I think we had positive, constructive, honest, fair, transparent discussions with both of them, individuals. I think what happened in Sochi, nothing really bad but certainly something that needs to be improved and addressed and I think it’s only an opportunity of lesson learned and trying to do better in the future. But how much I’m confident it will not happen, I’m not at all. I think these are both very good drivers. They are all going for a single objective which is winning themselves but I think what again is more important is that at least we between us we’ve got clarity and fairness and I think that’s key.

    Q: You say they’re both very competitive drivers. What have you learnt about Sebastian and Charles over the last two grand prix weekends?

    MB: I think that they are both performing very well and, as I’ve often said this season, it’s somehow a luxury for a team principal having this situation. I’m very pleased for the racing performance of Sebastian, as I am for the one of Charles since, let’s say, the start of the season and his progresses. What I’ve learned, that we’ve got a very competitive line-up. But I don’t think I learned it. It’s not a surprise, it’s something on which we’re simply happy.

    Q: And what about this weekend. How’s your car performing and what do you make of the pace of the Mercedes this morning in FP1?

    MB: It’s only FP1, very difficult normally to judge. We cannot neglect that we set the four poles in the last four grands prix but we’ve seen as well that our competitors have brought some upgrades here. The Red Bull and the Honda will be very competitive this weekend as well. The weekend will be shortened because of tomorrow. Sunday morning the conditions can be very difficult for everybody after, let me say, the bad weather of tomorrow. So, I think it will be a difficult and challenging weekend for everybody. More important that we are focused on ourselves. We’ve got some homework after FP1 certainly to do. A few balance issues to be addressed. Again, I think the benchmark are still the cars which are ahead in the Championship and we are still the challengers but I’m pretty sure we can be competitive and this is our objective.

    QUESTIONS FROM THE FLOOR

    Q: (Eric Bielderman – L’Equipe) To all managers: would you regard this afternoon’s FP2 as a potential qualification session due to the fact that Sunday morning, with the wind, it might not be possible… there is a slight chance it might not be possible to run the qualification process?

    GS: I wouldn’t say a qualification but I think a lot of us will try to put in a fast time to prevent…  if qualifying is cancelled on Sunday morning, they are discussing it now, we need to look at the weather. But for sure, we have got more tyres available as well because we are not running tomorrow so it’s a judgement for everybody to do, to see if they can do a good lap but I think it will be quite interesting as Mattia said before, this afternoon, with not having FP3, there will be a lot of running out there this afternoon so hopefully we have got an interesting programme going.

    MB: Not much more to add. I think the answer was completely clear. I don’t think the main objective of this afternoon will be to set the best lap time. The main activity, certainly, will be to address any set-up issues that we got in the morning, making sure that we are ready for Sunday because still, I think, the most likely will be to have qualifying on Sunday morning and then the race in the afternoon. But no doubt, if we can, we will try to do at least a good lap, just in case.

    TT: In terms of a PU settings point of view, we just set up our PU for the qualifying and the race this afternoon and we will see. I hope the typhoon goes very quick after landing on the Japan island.

    CA: Yeah, it’s going to be a bit of a balancing exercise because we still need to prepare the race and particularly, in our case, because of the development parts, we still need to understand (them) a bit better and look at that but in parallel, we will keep that in the back of our minds. As far as we are concerned, we have elected to stay with our Friday engine, which is down on power because it’s an engine which we were using initially at the start of the season, so it’s costing a little bit but on balance we still believe that Sunday will be decent enough so that qualifying can be run so we prefer to stay with that plan.

    FV: Not much to add that I think at the end it will be a mix between FP2 and FP3 and in case of non-quali on Sunday, I hope that we won’t take the race number for Antonio!

    Q: (Dan Knutson – Auto Action, Speedsport) Fred, when will the team decide who Kimi’s team-mate will be next year?

    FV: We will take the decision quite soon but honestly, if you have a look at the last event I think that Antonio is doing a very strong job, that he was matching Kimi in the last six or seven qualifyings in a row. He was in front in Sochi. OK, the first lap was not a good one for us but he’s doing the job and he’s improving step-by-step but this morning we had an issue on the car and he was not able to show the pace but he’s doing the job, he’s improving and I’m very confident with Antonio.

    Q: (Kate Walker – Financial Times) I have a two-part question for Mattia: first off, I was wondering if you could talk us through the progress on the 2021 rules from the perspective of Ferrari and secondly, what is your current position on the use of the veto?

    MB: 2021, there will be a meeting with the FIA and F1 next week on the 16th which I think will be very important because that’s the last one, altogether, before the end of the month when there will be a new vote. I think there are still a lot of open points and discussions are still ongoing so how will be the conclusion of all these discussions, it is very difficult to say at the moment. There are various interests between teams, between the teams and the F1 and the teams and the FIA. But certainly, as Ferrari, we are intending to play our role, we believe as Ferrari because of what Ferrari represents for F1, we’ve got a voice, an important voice in the discussions but no doubt that there’s still a lot of points to be addressed. In terms of the veto – you mentioned the veto – as I said I think last time in Sochi that will really be a shame. I don’t think that should be the case at all. I think we’ve got a good and open discussion with the stakeholders at the moment and I’m as well somehow hopeful that we can find the right compromise at the end.

    Q: (Julien Billiotte – AutoHebdo) Gunther, you’ve been summoned to the FIA stewards for what you said over the radio in Sochi. Are you surprised, are you upset, do you believe you have a strong defence case?

    GS: I don’t know what they’ve got to say. I’m going to see them in five minutes, I will be leaving here early actually, because the two dates clashed. I don’t know what they’re going to tell me. You read the same as I read so I don’t know any more information than that. I can tell you something a little bit later but I hope I don’t get a penalty for leaving the press conference early!

    Q: (Martin Moravec – dpa) Mattia, when you look at this intense rivalry between Sebastian and Charles, do you fear that at some point you could lose control of your drivers?

    MB: No, no I don’t think there is the risk of losing control because there is a difference between not managing drivers and at least having the intent to manage them. There is always a solution which is not manage them, maybe someone may do so, I think our intention is to try to manage the situation to the benefit of the team and secondly to the benefit, overall, as well, of the drivers. We may do a few things that can be addressed or improved and I think that is what we are building and trying to do for the future.

     

    Ends

  • The car felt amazing, says poleman Charles Leclerc

    The car felt amazing, says poleman Charles Leclerc

    Charles Leclerc (centre) at the FIA Press Conference after taking pole on Saturday. An FIA image

    DRIVERS
    1 – Charles LECLERC (Ferrari)
    2 – Lewis HAMILTON (Mercedes)
    3 – Sebastian VETTEL (Ferrari)

    TRACK INTERVIEWS
    (Conducted by Jenson Button)

    Q: Charles, all I can say is, wow! What a dominant performance. All of the way through practice, yesterday, today, qualifying – you really are on a role.
    Charles LECLERC: Yeah, the car felt amazing. It definitely feels great to be back on pole. I don’t know if it’s the best track to start on pole. The straight is very long after the start. Tomorrow the start will be very important as always, but here probably even more, because of the straight length.

    Q: It’s still the best place to be in. The last person to score four [consecutive] pole positions for Ferrari was Michael Schumacher. That must make you feel pretty special?
    CL: Yeah it definitely feels very, very special, but I don’t really want to think about those kind of stats for now. I just want to focus on the job. There’s still a long way to go until tomorrow. It’s definitely a good start, we’ve been competitive all weekend long and the race simulation seems positive too, so it’s looking good for tomorrow.

    Q: Congratulations. Lewis, I must say, all the way through qualifying, obviously the Ferraris have had the upper hand, but as always you pulled the lap out there at the end and got the best out of the car?
    Lewis HAMILTON: I’ll tell you, it was a tough qualifying session, because these guys have some crazy speeds on the straights. They go to another level, you know. That whole party mode you talked about us having, they have something else beyond that – jet mode! Nonetheless, I gave it absolutely everything I had at the end and the team did such a great job to just tinker and push forwards. I’m so glad it came together. I wasn’t expecting to get on the front row for sure, so I’m really, really happy with it nonetheless.

    Q: And the great thing for you guys also is that you have the medium tyres for the start of the race. It looks like you knew they would be quick in qualifying so you’ve gone for a slightly different strategy for the race.
    LH: Yeah, well we know that they are on a slightly lower drag level this weekend plus they have that power, so we’ve got to try something. You’ve seen the last couple of races we’ve been behind all the way, so we’re fortunate enough to opt for another strategy and I think the team have done a really good job with putting us in that position. It’s a long way down to Turn 1, so it’s not always the best for starts on the harder tyre, but I’m going to try to two the hell out of Charles if I get the chance. But it’s going to be hard because they get good starts as well.

    Q: Sebastian, not the easiest qualifying I’m sure. Q1 was pretty tricky: one little mistake and all hell broke loose after that. But, P3, you’ve got the run down to Turn 1 and I’m sure that after the last race, with the strategy and winning that race, there are still a lot of opportunities tomorrow?
    Sebastian VETTEL: Yeah, definitely. Obviously I’m not entirely happy, I think I couldn’t extract the absolute maximum from the car. As you said, it was a bit disruptive in Q1 but by the time we got to Q3 I thought it was OK. You spoke about Turn 1, it’s a long way, obviously we’ll see. We’re on different tyres strategies compared to the Mercs, so I think the race will be decided tomorrow. The speed is there so let’s keep it up.

    Q: As you said, there’s a long straight down to Turn 2. You guys are pretty quick in a straight line too. For us it’s going to be great watching, but it’s going to be pretty crazy for you guys into Turn 2?
    SV: Yeah, first you need a good start; then you worry about the rest, sort of thing. Let’s see. Obviously there’s potentially an advantage if you are behind but I guess if you are behind you always tend to say that, so let’s see what happens.

    PRESS CONFERENCE

    Q: Charles, you got progressively quicker as the session went on. Where were you finding the time?
    CL: I don’t think I had any clean laps before the one of Q3. The first lap of Q3 felt very good. The second lap: very good until Turn 16, where I lost rears, and I lost a little bit of lap time. But overall the car was just coming together. The balance was better and better. I was adjusting a little bit the aero balance and I just felt more and more confident.

    Q: And what about your confidence for tomorrow’s race – the long run pace of your car?
    CL: I believe that the long run pace yesterday was extremely positive, I think probably the most positive of the whole season, so this is looking good. But it’s going to be an interesting race. I mean, Mercedes are starting on the medium, so I think the strategy will play a role. I think we did the right choice to start on the soft, but we will see tomorrow.

    Q: Good luck with that and well done today. Lewis, if we could come on to you. You sounded very happy at the end of the session, happy to split the Ferraris for the second week in a row. How good was your lap?
    LH: Pretty decent. It was a pretty good lap. Honestly, it was a really good lap. Last time, Singapore felt like a really good lap as well, it’s just… I was just saying to Charles out there that already by Turn 1 we were already three tenths down or something like that, so it’s very, very hard. But nonetheless I pushed, we pushed, as hard as we could and I was really, really happy with the lap. It all came together. That last one was the best of the weekend – as it should be – and no mistakes or anything like that, so I really feel like I got everything and maybe a little bit more from the car to split the Ferraris once again, which is not an easy task.

    Q: Charles thinks it’s going to be a strategic battle tomorrow. Do you feel the same way?
    LH: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. I think the team did a great job to put us on the mediums and naturally from the two tyres there’s obviously a delta and the softer the tyre the better the start. So it will be a little bit tough off the start tomorrow. But even if we were in the lead, if we were on pole for example, they are just so fast on the straights by the time we get to Turn 1, which is the little kink, they blast past us with the jet fuel or whatever it is. So, yeah, it is about strategy, which is why we are on a different tyre and I hope that we can utilise that and keep the pressure on. If you’ve seen the couple of races we’ve had we’ve been right with them but I’m hoping tomorrow we can really give them a good fight.

    Q: Sebastian, coming to you, it seemed a good opening lap of Q3 for you but then it seems to slip away on that second lap. Is that a fair assessment?
    SV: Not really. I was quite happy in general. Obviously a bit disruptive with Q1 where we got a bit unfortunate with yellow flags and stuff. I thought by the time we got to Q3 that was fine. I think overall I was pretty happy with the car. I just felt that there was more in the car that, yeah, I couldn’t get to. Nevertheless, I think tomorrow is a long race. I think we have good pace for the race. It will be very interesting with the Mercedes on different tyres to start with, so let’s see what happens.

    QUESTIONS FROM THE FLOOR

    Q: (Frederic Ferret – L’Equipe) Lewis, how important was it to be on the first row for tomorrow’s race? And would it be crucial to be at the second corner first, before the Ferraris to avoid what happened last week in Singapore?
    LH: Time will tell. But, of course, if I’m able to try and somehow keep Seb behind, and there’s only one car ahead, for example, that changes things on top. So, naturally we’re going to push as hard as we can but it’s going to be very, very hard. Down to Turn One it’s a long drag – but I’m sure we’ll have a good battle, one way or another.

    Q: (Christian Menath – motorsport-magazin.com) Question for all three of you. You all sounded pretty confident that you’re on the right tyre, even though you have different ones. Can you explain why you are confident this is the right tyre you’re starting on? Do you think this has to do with the car that the tyre suits better to your car – or is it only strategic reasons?
    CL: On our side I think the start is very important here and we thought that the benefits of starting on Soft was big. And then there was not much difference, in terms of degradation, from the Soft to the Medium. So, yeah, we thought it was worth it to make it our start tyre.
    LH: I just wanted to be on something different.

    Is that what it now takes to beat these guys? You’ve got to roll the dice?
    LH: I don’t know. I haven’t beaten them for a while! So I can’t tell you. I’ll tell you at the end of tomorrow.

    Q: (Scott Mitchell – Autosport) To all three. Charles, this is your fourth pole in a row. You were asked downstairs, you’re the first person to do that for Ferrari since Michael, which is obviously pretty special. Are you on a roll at the moment in qualifying where you feel like you can’t do anything wrong, and everything comes together. And to Lewis and Seb, you’ve both had massive success in Formula One, been on this sort of run – what does it do for you as a driver when you have this sort of succession of poles?
    CL: Of course I felt confident going into qualifying but at the end anything… I mean at one point it’s going to end, so whether it’s now or later, I don’t know. So, the only thing I’m trying to do is focus on myself, try to have exactly the same procedure as I’ve had since the last four races and not… yeah, I definitely don’t come in the car thinking it will be easy and that it will come together alone. I just try to keep working as I did in the last few races, and then hopefully the lap time comes.

    Lewis, how does it feel? The importance of momentum, invincibility when you’re on a roll?
    LH: I don’t know – I’ve never felt invincible. Of course, when you get on a roll, it doesn’t really make… from my experience, it’s nice, for sure but it doesn’t make a difference. So if it’s separated: one pole; one second; one pole, it doesn’t make any difference to me. But he’s stealing all the poles right now, so it’s going to be very, very hard to beat their poles when they’re so fast on the straights but we’re working at it.

    SV: I don’t know – it’s been a while for me! Yeah, I think you take every session separately, so you’re not really trying to look back. I think it’s just about nailing every session.

    Q: (Dzhastina Golopolosova – The Paddock Magazine) Question to Charles. Mercedes dominated here for five years and today you showed that you can break this trend. What do you think about tomorrow?
    CL: For now… I mean the race it tomorrow. It will be very important to stay in front, and they were also strong in the race pace, as they’ve always been since the beginning of the season, so, it obviously feels good to be on pole here. I think Singapore was a big surprise for everyone, for us to be in front and here, I think we felt we had our chances, considering how quick we were in Singapore. Yeah, I mean it feels good to break that but we need to finish the job tomorrow.

    Q: (Andrea Cremonesi – La Gazzetta dello Sport) Charles, Jenson already mentioned the record that you equalled today with Michael Schumacher but I want to consider with you that there was this past 19 years from that and there are some other guys, for example Seb, who are with you that couldn’t do that. So how is your feeling, to think that today is an historical day not only for you but for Ferrari?
    CL: As I said, it feels good but it doesn’t change my approach to the other weekends and as Seb and Lewis said, every time you go into a session, you take it just normally, without thinking about the others, the last poles I’ve had. So yeah, obviously it feels great but I don’t want to think about these things and I just want to focus on the job ahead.

    Q: (Giusto Ferronato – La Gazzetta dello Sport) For both Ferrari drivers: in Italy probably now many people are thinking that you have found the solution to win all the races. Is this correct or they are too optimistic?
    CL: I think we need to keep our feet on the ground. Obviously at the moment we are in a good momentum, we are having really good performances but at the end it doesn’t change… Mercedes are still quite ahead in the overall championship, which at the end is what matters the most. I think we need to keep our heads down, keep working. Of course at the moment it seems that it’s working our way but I will not say it will be like this for the rest of the season, so we need to keep working.
    SV: Not much to add so maybe too optimistic. I think we need to wait until tomorrow. I think at the last race obviously it was difficult to pass. I think Mercedes was faster than us in the race so we will see what happens tomorrow with different strategy.

    Q: Sebastian, is this the best Ferrari you’ve driven?
    SV: I think the car got a lot better since the beginning of the year when we started to really struggle. Obviously we had a bit of a high at winter testing. I think we understood what it takes and I think the step in Singapore in particular seemed to help us and allowed us to make another step forward. But I think the ’17 car out of the box was probably the best so far.

    Q: (Frederic Ferret – L’Equipe) Sebastian, have you looked at all the data with Charles on the exercise of pole and have you found where he is better than you since the return of the summer?
    SV: Well, obviously in qualifying here and there. I think we didn’t have the best sessions on my side. I think obviously today Charles was faster so it’s pretty easy to see where he’s faster but it’s a little bit here and there. I don’t think there’s any pattern standing out, saying that he’s always faster in the same type of corner. As I said, obviously the last couple of races was closer than maybe it looked on the result so we will see what happens tomorrow. Usually come race day I’m getting more and more confident in the car and pace has never been a problem in the race so we will see what happens.

    Q: (Scott Mitchell – Autosport) Lewis, you’ve mentioned the deficit you’ve got at the moment to Ferrari and where you feel that deficit is so how deep are you having to dig inside yourself for a lap like this? You had a big gap to Valtteri today for example and you said your Singapore lap was also very good.
    LH: Yeah. Honestly I feel like that maybe the last couple of laps have felt worthy, like pole-worthy in terms of how this has come together and optimising within the car. Naturally obviously they are faster than us and Charles has done a good job but I mean in terms of being as close to the limit as possible and yeah, I think I’ve just been getting more and more comfortable with the car, I think in this second half of the season, a little bit more comfortable with it, even though we’ve lost a little performance compared to them but there’s still work to do collectively, in all of us, including myself so we just keep working on that. Please don’t write that the wrong way, pole-worthy, I was meaning in terms of what do you… putting the perfect lap together, I feel like each time I’m getting as close to that as possible and then you finish the lap and it’s quite a long way off pole but it feels like quite an achievement to get in between the two Ferraris who have a bit of a delta to us at the moment.

    Ends

  • We were a bit surprised that we closed the gap as much as we did: Ferrari rep

    TEAM REPRESENTATIVES – Laurent MEKIES (Ferrari), Paul MONAGHAN (Red Bull Racing), James ALLISON (Mercedes), Mario ISOLA (Pirelli)

    PRESS CONFERENCE

    Q: Laurent, if we could start with you please. Ferrari have had a tremendous run since the summer break but can we start by talking about the Singapore Grand Prix. Lots of upgrades on your car. Were you surprised – at all surprised – by the impact they had?

    Laurent MEKIES: Well, you know, like you say, we brought a lot of new parts to Singapore, so you are always hoping they will perform at best. If anything, yes, we were a bit surprised to be able to close the gap as much as we did. Nonetheless, we are conscious that the gaps are very small. These guys [Mercedes] or these guys [Red Bull Racing] could have won the race equally, so it was just good to be back in the fight there, and here I guess we’ll have another good data point to understand if it’s going to be the case everywhere or if it’s going to be a lot more work needed.

    Q: How tight was the call to pit Sebastian on Lap 19. What did you see on the data that led to that decision?

    LM: I think from a strategy point of view, it was clear that we had to pit that lap, and that’s the call the guys made and that was good. Obviously, what surprised everybody is that the undercut, so-called now, was very, very powerful, to the extent that we ended up not only in front of Lewis but also in front of Charles. I think the important thing is that it put both our cars in the lead.

    Q: James, while we’re talking about Singapore, it was clear to Ferrari to pit Sebastian on lap 19. Why didn’t you do the same?

    James ALLISON: It wasn’t maybe quite so clear to us! I think the thing that surprised Laurent also surprised us, which is just the dramatic power of that undercut. Had we better anticipated that it would have been clear also to us.

    Q: Can we expect a more aggressive strategy from Mercedes this weekend?

    JA: No, not necessarily. I think everyone tries to play the strategy like a game of poker. You try to line the odds up in your favour. You can’t make a winning move at every turn, you just try to do the thing that, nine times out of ten, is going to play out correctly. And that’s not really a matter of aggression or being passive. It’s just trying to figure out what is the best likely outcome.

    Q: And did your car perform in line with expectations in Singapore?

    JA: No. We were taken aback by the pace of our competition. It’s an annoying business, Formula 1. You can think you’re going to be good and then find that you get a whipping. We were pretty much where we thought we’d be on race pace but, in Singapore, if you don’t put it on pole, then you line up to be beaten – and that’s what happened.

    Q: Paul: you saw what Ferrari saw. How clear was it to you to pit Max on the same lap as Sebastian?

    Paul MONAGHAN: Pretty clear. Max was quite vocal in his assessment of the situation we found ourselves in so we got on with it and pitted him.

    Q: You went to Singapore as one of the pre-race favourites – so was your car performing in line with expectations or…?

    PM: Well, it depends how you claim your expectations. We were not as quick as we’d hoped to be, relative to our opposition. So, if our car performed to its limit, the others were better than us. A little bit disappointed and you lick your wounds and move on, don’t you? You don’t dwell on the race, you learn from it, and we hope we bring the lessons here in subsequent races and into next year.

    Q: While we’re talking Singapore Mario, just quick question for you, did the three Safety Car periods help to keep the Hard tyre alive? Without them, would it have been a two-stop race?

    Mario ISOLA? It’s difficult to reply to your question because, as usual, the Hard tyre is not tested for long stints during the free practice, so we can just make estimation – but it happens often during the race that we have a different scenario. So yes, on the paper, it should have lasted for all the race but in terms of performance, and keeping the performance to the end of the race, it’s difficult. Obviously the Safety Car is helping the performance life of the tyre. With the Hard tyre, it could have been difficult to switch-on the tyre, a worn tyre, after the Safety Car but they were able to do that – so happy with the final result.

    Q: Laurent, back to you. Any reason to think you can’t make it four in a row this weekend?

    LM: Well, you know, as we said, Singapore was for sure a good result and as you said, Spa and Monza were also good races – but if you look carefully, it was extremely tight in Spa, that’s the reality of it. It was extremely tight in Monza, we had these guys behind us for 50 laps. It was better than expected in Singapore, with everything that is so specific about Singapore. So, here will be, I guess, a real answer for us when it comes to what’s going to be the pace from now until the end of the season.

    Q: James, this weekend, your competitiveness relative to Ferrari in particular?

    JA: I think it would be a brave man who would put his house on any one of these three teams because it looks pretty challengingly close at the front. So, I have no idea. We’re going to have to work well in FP2 and FP3 to be able to do well in qualifying and in the race. At the moment, it’s too difficult to say whether that’s going to happen – which I guess is fun for everyone else but a bit more stressful for us.

    Q: Paul, this weekend you’re taking a lot of penalties. I suppose with Suzuka in mind. How important is it for Red Bull to perform well in Japan, home race of Honda?

    PM: Well, we haven’t taken penalties here solely for Suzuka. We are in our first year with Honda and, if you look at it, we’ve not had an engine fail or anything like that. All the engines in the pool are still there. As part of the programme to get ourselves more competitive, we’ve opted to take just five places here. It will dent us from necessarily being with these guys on lap one – but it’s looking beyond Suzuka, we’re into next year. It would be nice for us to go well in Suzuka, wouldn’t it? But I dare say the gentlemen to my left will have something to say about that.

    Q: Mario, its recently been confirmed there will be an extra tyre test in October for next year. Which teams are going to participate in that test and what are you expecting to achieve at that test.

    MI: The target of the test is to finalise the development for 2020. We had some addition requests in June and July, so it was difficult to change our development at that time and we made a proposal to have an extra test to test a new compound with a wider working range, especially on the Hard levels. That is not possible in Paul Ricard – that was the last test in September – and, luckily, three guys were available to run the test, so we will have one day each, Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull. That is a very good opportunity for us to finalise the product for next year.

     

    QUESTIONS FROM THE FLOOR

     

    Q: (Scott Mitchell – Autosport) To James, Laurent and Paul. We don’t have the finalised 2021 rules yet. We’ve had bits to look at, things that may or may not change. How much progress or exploration have you been able to do with these rules and how intense is that going to make it behind the scenes now you’ve got this season to finish, 2020 to focus on and then a big rule change in 2021?

    JA: Well, big rule changes are pretty challenging whenever they come. This one is certainly, drafted is a lot, lot bigger than most and that will make it extra-specially challenging. I would say that, however, the precise nature of those rules is still being discussed. And so the actual amount of work that can be done right now is relatively limited because, precisely where those rules shake out is not yet fixed. But it’s going to be difficult.

    LM: Yeah, I think on that front we have been pretty much repeating the same thing all the way through. You know, it’s… we have a very good show right now and we are always a little bit cautious about having such a big change of the magnitude that James describes coming – because there could be a lot of unintended consequences and it’s something that we are still obviously discussing with the stakeholders to make sure we don’t end up with something that is not as good as what we have now. So, as far as Ferrari is concerned, we always felt that Formula 1 DNA was having very different cars and therefore the idea of having some areas very much standardised and some other areas with more limitation is something that we are still hoping to get into better place for 2021.

    PM: To answer your question directly, it’s a big challenge, isn’t it? We want to challenge these guys next, we are obliged to look at the 2021 regulations now and, as has been discussed, the negotiation is ongoing as to how they will fall out. So, our resources are being pushed and pulled in many directions and the change proposed for 2021 is enormous. It’s not an evolution as we from ’16 into ’17, you may argue, and yeah, it’s going to be mighty challenging.

    Q: (Dieter Rencken – Racing Lines/racefans.net) To all four, how difficult is it to squeeze this additional tyre test into the schedule particularly given the logistics between now and the end of the year and then to the three team representatives, which drivers will you be using and James, will it be Esteban Ocon?

    PM: Very difficult indeed. As was just asked, we’re heading to Suzuka and clearly with Honda we want to be in the best shape we can be and now we are being pulled to Barcelona as well, so it’s mighty challenging. But we will do it. We’ve said we will do it; we’ll run a car. I think at the moment Mr Dennis is down to drive it. Jake Dennis, I believe, is going to drive it. He’s driven our car plenty of times before and he’ll be fine, he’ll do a good job for us and we’ll go and do a tyre test.

    LM: I think, as James mentioned it early on, and Mario as well, we have been asking so many times things to Pirelli, I think it was only our duty to be able to do this test when they actually ask us to go and test this latest evolution. So, yes, logistically it is complicated but Sebastian will drive there and at the very end of the test he will just fly straight to Japan. But we felt it was, again, a duty towards everything we are asking to Pirelli to support the fact that we all want better tyres and that was the best way to achieve that.

    JA: A similar story. It’s tough but it’s doable. The aim of getting better tyres is a noble one. We’re just leaning heavily on people who are knackered but they’ll step up and do it and in answer to your specific question I think Esteban is going to drive it.

    MI: We are grateful to the teams that accepted to test for us. I fully understand that it is a big effort of them to fit this tyre test into the calendar, which is very, very busy. It will be the same next year with an additional race, so we are finalizing also the plan for next year. Testing is very important for us. We need to validate our tyres on track. We cannot change the product during the year. We have to do the best we can do during the season in order to homologate a good product for the following season and the only opportunity is to have a proper test calendar. I understand how difficult it is, and thanks to, not just these three teams, but all the teams, because in previous test sessions all the teams were available to test for us and we can do our job. We have a lot of requests, different requests coming from different people and we are trying to summarise them in order to have a shared document with everybody agreeing on that and we try to do our job in the best possible way.

    Q: (Lawrence Edmondson – ESPN) Laurent, you mentioned that there might be some unintended consequences of these 2021 changes. To all the three team representatives, do you also share that concern and if so what is it that’s concerning you?

    PM: Well, I can’t put words into Laurent’s mouth. We have concerns over the draft regulations. I think it would inappropriate to share them as individual items in this forum. As has been discussed, the negotiation is ongoing and if don’t participate we can’t influence it. If we have concerns, we will raise them. If they are the same as Ferrari’s then it probably adds to the argument. But yes, there are concerns as to the nature of the rules and the drafting thereof.

    LM: I think as we discussed before, we are completely in favour of things that could reduce cost, financial regulations and budget cap and so on. We are a bit more nervous and cautious for what it means for Formula 1 when it comes to getting the cars to look alike or getting the cars to be having a lot more standard parts. That’s basically where the difference lies. We could also add that, ironically, to get ready for these 2021 regulations has actually a significant cost implication when it comes to the R&D work that needs to be done. Paul touched a little bit on that earlier. You have to run different programmes in parallel and it comes at a cost.

    JA: Not too dissimilar to the other two. I’d just preface it by saying that the discussions about what the regulations will be are still ongoing, so you don’t want to get into too much detail, but the concerns do all fall in the striking the right balance between the desire of a team to be able to produce performance by good design, by good engineering and the desire of the sport to equalise out things. The sport is, to a degree, a Darwinian competition and that’s part of its spice and there needs to be a good balance struck between the desire of the individual teams to fight for their best opportunities and the desire maybe of the owners to level everything our and have it that sort of any team on any day could win.

    Q: (Beatrice Zamuner – motorlat) Laurent, given Ferrari’s momentum, are planning on bringing any further updates for the rest of the season or are you just focusing on 2020 and 2021?

    LM: I think it’s that time of the year when we are all switching our attentions to 2020 so I don’t think there will be anything significant from now until the end of the season. As you mentioned, on top of that, you also need to start to thinking about what’s going to happen next. So the short answer is there won’t be anything significant anymore.

    Q: (Valery Kartashev – Racing News Agency) My question is to the three team representatives – how many people work directly on the car in your team and how difficult is it going to be for you to keep all of them in the team with the budget cap coming?

    JA: What do you mean by work on the car?

    Q: Engineers, people who design this car?

    JA: OK. Forgive me, that’s not a number I want to share in public, because why would we want to just volunteer that? But it’s a reasonable number of people both in engine world and chassis world and our challenge will be to take the budget cap as a new set of regulatory constraints, just as at the moment we have to meet a mass limit or we have to set our car out to get the maximum amount of downforce in the constraints of the Article 3 parts of the regulation. Now we also have some financial regulations and it’s really no different dealing with those than it is dealing with all the other constraints you face when designing and making car. Our challenge will be to read those regulations, take them as they written and just figure out how to make the quickest possible car within those constraints. It will be an interesting challenge but one that like every other regulation change there has been we will try to rise to.

    LM: Very similar to James. We will be looking at it as a new set of regulations that we will try to comply with. Yes, so people will always be put at the first place, so the priority will be to protect the workforce and the structures before thinking to cut something else.

    PM: Similar really. We don’t build the team structure to have fat in there. So everybody has a significant role. We’ll try to protect all of those. We’ll comply with the financial rules. There’s still a little bit of drafting going on and yeah, we will adapt and comply and go from there.

    Q: (Dieter Rencken – Racing Lines, Racefans.net) This morning the FIA announced that it had postponed the brake tender. What were the cost, safety and performance implications of standardised brakes, please?

    PM: Unclear, at this moment in time. The draft specification was being prepared. From what we saw, there were potential cost savings but equally there were some specification changes required to be able to run all the parts as we currently run them, and that was not, for me, concluded. There were quite significant changes in some areas so all said and done, I couldn’t tell you exactly what it was because we hadn’t finalised our work.

    LM: I think it will be very difficult to put a number on it, for all the reasons that are linked to the lack of full definition of the 2021 regulations so it would be difficult to project how much will actually be saved. There will be a saving, for sure because we will stop doing some R&D work and so forth and so on. Nevertheless, we will discover them right now and I think you will only be able to put a figure on it, only after a year or two of operations when you know the regulations, when you know what the car looks like and you know what is actually your need, so it’s a bit early on for that.

    JA: I haven’t got much to add to what the other folk have said. I think it’s a pragmatic decision. Brakes are very long lead-time items, you have to decide where you are headed with them quite a long time before you use them and the picture is too open. The destination of the 2021 regulations is too open at the moment, to design, with confidence, a standard set of stuff that then the entire grid is saddled with for that year if we get it wrong. It is pragmatic to step back, see how things develop and then re-consider in the future, perhaps under less pressure when the regulations are not being fought on all fronts.

    Q: (Scott Mitchell – Autosport) You’ve all talked about the significance of the 2021 changes and the fact that we don’t have defined rules yet, so given that the season is 18 months away, what would be the ideal start time for you to be working on these cars? And when you get this defined rule set, is that going to be enough time to do things exactly the way you want to do them?

    JA: Well, a sort of facile answer to that is that there’s always enough time, it just depends on the quality of what you do changes, depending on how much time you have. There was a time, I’m sure you remember, where the Brawn team managed to put a brand new engine in their car and win a championship in a matter of a few weeks, because they had to do it. So you can do a lot of things in a short amount of time but the standard lead-time for working on a new car is a little over a year so you want to be working sort of November/December of the year before the year before so 14 months or so. A bigger rule change you would maybe want a bit more of a run-up at it than that. But if there was less time you would still do it, it would just be a bit more of a finger in the air job.

    LM: Very similar to James. I think, as James said, we could make up the time for most of the items, you will just deliver something a bit more rough and I think in that specific case it’s probably more important that we get the regulations right, even if it comes at a later stage, even. If it means something is delayed to the following years than to have something early that we have then not happy with.

    PM: I think, as Laurent said, it would be preferable to have rules that we all agree on before we embark. If that pushes it back a little bit, we can still do a car and whoever’s finger is lucky in the air may well be lucky at the start of the season, you never know. It would also depend on how we chose to divvy up our resources for the 2020 car. So we have our own resources to deploy and the time question, well, it’s the same for all of us once we get going and we’ll do it.

    Q: (Laurence Edmonson – ESPN) One alternative that’s been proposed to standard parts is open source parts; do you think that’s something that could work, is there any fundamental issues with doing that and will it also help to  reduce costs but maybe in a different way?

    PM: Red Bull are supportive of the open source proposal. What parts you put in and take out needs a little bit of thought. I think it protects the sport from any errors in the standard parts that could take us into 2021 with a legacy of problems and difficulties and we’re happy to participate in that open source proposal.

    LM: Yeah, I think it’s better than to have standard parts for all the reasons Paul explained. It’s probably slightly complicated to come up with yet another way to classify parts for the F1 cars but we are supportive of the fact that if it can avoid risk associated with having to have parts (unclear) then it’s good news.

    JA: It’s quite a new idea and a reasonable amount of chat is going to be needed to turn it from promising concept into a deliverable reality but like the others, I think it’s worthy of exploring. I think it will take a decree of patience because anything that’s open source – imagine we’re coming up to 2021 – everyone designs up to the wire and then releases and goes racing so you couldn’t sit there waiting for the open sources design to come from a competitor, thinking I won’t do that myself, I’ll just wait for it to appear on the internet, because by the time it appeared it would be too late. So really you’re talking about a system that will build up over the seasons and a database of data that will effectively mean that the best design eventually percolates through all the teams and it ceases to be an area where any of us would particularly want to spend development money because a good design is out there, but that’s the thing that will require a little bit of patience, but I think it is a fairly robust way – if you have that patience – of making progress.

    Q: (Alessandro Gargantini – Autosprint) Laurent, question on the Ferrari Driver Academy; you are also in charge of this programme. We know Charles is coming from the programme. This weekend we have Robert Shwartzman who is very well positioned to put his hands on the (F3) title so I would like to ask you how does Ferrari consider the junior programme, how is it investing in this and think it’s the right direction to grow talent?

    LM: Well, I think the answer is in the question. The fact that we have Charles in the car today for us is the most straight answer to that. He’s coming from our driving academy, he has been with us for years, it’s been incredible to see him growing through that academy and to see him running the red car. We have seven drivers, from 15 to 19 years old that are lining up next in the academy. As you say, Robert Shwartzman has a good chance to fight and hopefully to win the F3 title this weekend so it means that the next generation is pushing and for us it’s completely key to what’s going to happen post-2021 and it’s certainly something that we’re taking very much as a central point of our strategy.

    Q: While we’re talking young driver programmes, perhaps Paul you could tell us a little bit about what’s going on with the Red Bull programme?

    PM: Well, we have numerous contracted drivers and they’re all still with us the following year. We’re incredibly lucky to have such a talent pool and we’ll do our utmost to draw the best from it.

    Q: James, anything about Mercedes young drivers coming through?

    JA: No, nothing that I’d wish to share here.

     

  • Ferrari did a great job and Charles put some hot laps, says Lewis Hamilton

    Singapore, 21 Sept. 2019: The following drivers attended the post-qualifying Saturday press conference: Charles Leclerc (Ferrari), Lewis Hamilton (Mercedes) and Sebastian Vettel (Ferrari).

    Track interviews conducted by Paul Di Resta:

    Q: Charles, congratulations to you. I mean, man, that’s three out of three pole positions. Everyone expected at Spa and Monza but you’ve lifted it to another level?

    Charles Leclerc: I’m extremely happy about today. If you look at the lap, it was a good lap, a very good lap, but there were some moments where I thought I’d lost the car that I took back and at the end, finishing the lap, we are in pole position. I would like to thank the team so much for what they have done. I mean, we came here knowing that it would be a difficult track for us but the team has done an amazing job to bring the package that we needed and I’m extremely happy to be on pole for tomorrow.

    Q: On the back of Monza they did bring this package and it certainly revitalised this car around this track. Explains how it feels and why it is so different?

    CL: Well, we brought some new bits and they worked properly, which was good to see. It’s not always the case, but it was this weekend. I’ve had a very tough Friday. Yesterday was definitely not my day; I didn’t feel comfortable in the car, but I worked quite hard and today it paid off, so very happy.

    Q: All the best for tomorrow, that team is fully behind you and I hope you put a good race on. Lewis, you needed a superhuman lap after your first run in Q3 to put yourself on the front row and to put yourself in position to fight this man?

    Lewis Hamilton: Yeah, I don’t know where Ferrari picked up their pace today as this is potentially not one of their tracks, but they did a great job. Charles obviously put some great laps in and it really needed something special at the end so I gave it absolutely everything I had. It was very, very close to the wall a couple of times but it was as much as I could get out of the car and I’m very, very happy to be on the front row in the mix with them so we can try to divide them tomorrow.

    Q: I guess your confidence in the race pace will pay off tomorrow and this is a hard race. It’s a long one that you’ve got to be there at the end?

    LH: Yeah, I think tomorrow we can be aggressive…

    Q: Different to Monza?

    LH: Ha! Well, it’s a street track but we’ll see.

    Q: Sebastian congratulations, the crowd are behind you. I know you had a very good lap at the start of Q3 there. It slipped away at the end but I guess overall you should be satisfied?

    Sebastian VETTEL: Yeah, obviously not really with Q3 – the final attempt should have been better. Overall, the car was making sense, I was feeling good and I was able to improve run by run, so maybe I peaked a bit too early. I think the track was probably bit faster at the end. As I said obviously I had a tiny wobble, so no point finishing the lap because I was already quite a bit behind, but it puts us in a good position for tomorrow.

    Q: You’ve got a lot of experience around here, you’ve won races, and you know it’s a long game. Are you feeling confident with the car you’ve got when it’s heavy and with high degradation?

    SV: Well it will certainly feel different tomorrow than it did today, but overall, yes. I think it should be a good race, so let’s see what the tyres will do, if we are able to push the full two hours, or if we have to manage, but one way or another it’s always fun around here so looking forward to it.

    PRESS CONFERENCE

    Q: Charles, many congratulations, that looked like a sensational lap. Can you just describe that pole position lap to us?

    CL: It was quite a crazy lap. The first one I compromised it. I started the lap too close to Lewis and that compromised the second sector and then I had quite a bit of pressure to perform on the last lap so I gave it all. There were quite a bit of mistakes, I lost the car quite a few times and I’ve seen myself in the wall at least twice or three times in the lap, but it felt amazing, the car was great. Friday was a very difficult day for me and to come here in qualifying and do the pole position feels absolutely amazing.

    Q: How surprised are you by the pace of the car this weekend?

    CL: Very surprised, because even though we knew there was a bit more to come yesterday we did not expect to challenge neither the Mercedes nor the Red Bulls. It’s quite a big surprise for the whole team but it juts proves how good a job they have done back at the factory and today it’s also thanks to them if we are on pole.

    Q: Lewis, if I can come to you and maybe start with that subject. How surprised are you at the pace of the Ferraris?

    LH: Well, we obviously came into the weekend knowing we would have a fight with the Red Bulls and it’s just knowing how the Ferraris have been in other places with high downforce, they’ve not been so strong – Budapest for example – and all of a sudden they’ve brought an upgrade here and it seems to have worked. Of course we were not expecting to have such a strong performance from them and to have that deficit to them. But they did a great job and I’m grateful that was able to split them – only just. But we were definitely lacking pace today, it was definitely a struggle out there to battle with them and be up there. I like how close it was between us all and hopefully that puts us in good stead for more good fights.

    Q: And how was Q3 for you – quite a big jump between your first and second runs?

    LH: The day has not been that great. I mean yesterday was a much smoother day for me and today was just a little bit of a… I feel like performance was lost a little bit today or else everyone else just improved. But Q3 the first lap run was so-so, didn’t feel so good. Obviously we were a second away and it looked like quite a leap to catch them up but yeah, then I just managed to pull back half a second in that last run, a nice clean run, but still just two tenths down in that first sector, which is obviously where it was lost.

    Q: Sebastian, Lewis says he wasn’t pleased with his first run of Q3 but you were fastest of everyone. How was that final segment of qualifying for you?

    SV: It started off very good and then, the last run, I think already in sector one, lost a little bit and was playing catch-up, and trying to take more and more risks throughout the lap which didn’t pay off. And then yeah, the last lap obviously didn’t come together. So, I think, yeah, overall it’s a good result of us putting the car, y’know, first and third for the team is great. I think it wasn’t the track where we expected to be so strong, so happy with that but obviously not happy with the very end of Q3. I think the car was good today and pole was up for grasp – but let’s see what happens tomorrow.

    Q: What about tomorrow? The long run pace of Ferrari versus that of Mercedes and Red Bull?

    SV: It was worse yesterday but yeah, I think we were able to extract quite a bit more from the car today, so let’s hope tomorrow is more like today.

    Questions from the Floor:

    Q: (Frederic Ferret – L’Equipe) Question to Charles. Can you tell us more about the two hard moments you had near the wall and how you catch the car in that time. Where was it?

    CL: I think whenever you lose the car, you don’t really know how you do it, it just comes instinctive and, yeah, these two times you are thinking about I think is exit of Turn Three and exit of Turn 11. These ones were quite big times. I was actually quite surprised I didn’t lose so much time by losing it that much but yeah, everything after that went smooth and I was just giving it all. So, yeah, it felt quite intense in the car but I’m very happy.

    Q: (Scott Mitchell – Autosport) To Charles and Seb, the upgrade here, how much of a difference has that made? How different does the car feel to Hungary, for example, high downforce. And Lewis, you talked about that deficit that you had in sector one. The Ferraris have been really quick on the straights this year, how ominous is it that they have picked up a bit of downforce as well?

    CL: On my side I struggle to compare two tracks. It’s quite difficult but performance-wise, it seems that it’s working. I think data-wise it was working yesterday for the engineers too. I think, from Hungary to now, we’ve understood also the car better in a way that we know the balance we need to achieve in order to have the best performance and I think that has also showed in the results on track. So, I think it’s a combination of knowing where the balance needs to be and the improvements that we’ve made on the car.

    Q: Sebastian, anything you can add: Hungary to here?

    SV: First of all, different tracks. In Hungary, if you speak about qualifying, maybe it’s the one to compare but for now, for tomorrow, we don’t know yet. I think we didn’t have such a great balance. I think some corners were very good; other corners we lost a lot. It seems like this weekend we’re not losing in those corners that we were losing in Hungary. So I think it’s mostly adding performance to the car and in the right place, so we were able to trim the balance, so that, yeah, we could extract more performance.

    Q: And Lewis, how ominous is the pace of the red cars?

    LH: I don’t know where they’ve picked up their pace, obviously. For a street circuit like this, earlier in the year they were not as close but they’ve obviously done a great job. I don’t really know where we’re losing it. Obviously in that first sector is a bit of a loss to us. I think some part of it is straight line but then they’ve been able to match us in the middle and the last sector, so I think just overall, clearly a big step for them and we’ll just keep pushing. We’ve not had an upgrade really for a while, so maybe when that comes it’ll help us a little bit.

    Q: (Laurence Edmondson – ESPN) Another question to the Ferrari drivers. Can you explain why you were losing so much time yesterday and how much you changed today to find all that pace – because it seems like a real night and day shift between yesterday and today?

    SV: Well, not that much. Obviously, yeah, yesterday we suffered with a lack of front grip, so we tried to put more front in the car. I think tonight with the temperatures dropping, etcetera, it seemed to come alive for us. I think that’s the biggest difference. In terms of spec, and so on, it’s exactly the same as yesterday.

    CL: Yeah, I was not happy with my driving yesterday. I think there was quite a bit into it. It was not a great day for me. So, I improved quite a lot driving today. And, as Seb said, also the balance we improved quite a bit from yesterday to today.

    Q: (David Coath – motorlat.com) A question for each of you please. With the reverse grid proposals, you would be starting 20th, 19th and 18th. Your thoughts please on any discussion that people talk about a reverse grid.

    CL: I would not be happy. I’m a lot happier to start first tomorrow but yeah, I don’t think it’s the solution for Formula 1. I think the best shall win and start in the best place and not reversing that order. I don’t think it’s the solution.

    LH: I don’t really know what to say to it. People that propose that don’t really know what they’re talking about.

    SV: I think it’s complete bullshit to be honest. I think we know… if you want to improve things I think it’s very clear we need to string the field more together, we need to have better racing. So, it’s just a plaster. I don’t know which genius came up with this but it’s not the solution. It’s completely the wrong approach.

    LH: He said it better than me…

    Q: (Daniele Sparisci – Corriera della Sera) To the Ferrari drivers: when did you start realising that pole was possible? This morning in FP3 did you see the car improving so much?

    CL: I thought the car was improving in FP3 but I expected Mercedes… It wasn’t a clean run for Mercedes and Red Bull this morning. We didn’t really know what to think but I think from then Q1 and then yeah, through Q1 I understood that we could have an opportunity for pole.

    SV: To be honest, I think Q2 is normally when people start putting serious references in and we were about there. By then I realised that we might have a chance for pole. The car felt very good.

    Q: (Oliver Davies – Sportskeeda.com) Charles, that’s three pole positions in a row, a fifth career pole position all in this season. Just how confident are you, how big is it, has it grown more and more each week because you’re only 21 but you’re achieving things very young? How do you feel so far?

    CL: It feels great but yeah, you enjoy qualifying for a very short time because then you need to focus on the race and in the end there are no points awarded for the pole position, which is a shame. It’s great, it’s very good to see that we are on pole on a track like this where we expected to struggle but on the other hand, me personally, I’m just focusing on the race now and I will, of course, be very happy if I’m in the same position tomorrow.

    Q: (Joe van Burik – RacingNews 365) Charles, how does it feel after two victories and now the pole position for tomorrow, to be the young driver everyone is looking at after Max has had his success earlier this season?

    CL: Well, it feels good, it means I’m doing well so that’s good. I think a pole position always feels like very, very good, just because we are all on the limit, we are all trying to put everything in this one lap and once you manage to put everything you wanted in that lap and that you finally get pole position it always feels amazing.

    Q: (Andreas Haupt – Auto Motor und Sport) Sebastian, do you feel that with a perfect lap you could have matched Charles’s lap time or even be ahead of him and what was the problem on the second lap in the first sector?

    SV: Well, I didn’t do it so obviously it’s all if and so on. I think the lap time was possible so I thought the first run was good, it was a good reference but I thought that especially in sector three I had quite a bit of lap time in hand and parts in sector two. And then in the last attempt I lost the car a little bit through turn three in sector one and then again in turn nine. From that point onwards I was a little bit down compared to the previous lap and was sort of trying to catch up and probably did push a little bit too hard so simple as that. Then had a bigger mistake in 18 so from that point onwards that was quite a lot of lap time lost. As I said before, the car was good, I felt good so obviously a shame that I didn’t put together the last attempt in Q3 but I think it was there today.

    Q: (Oliver Davies – Sportskeeda.com) A question for all three drivers: out of all the races on the F1 calendar, would you say this is probably the most brutal test out of them all, because of the conditions out there on the track?

    SV: Yeh, but brutal in which regard? Physically? Well I think physically it’s tough because obviously it’s very hot and there’s hardly any place to rest. In terms of bumps, it was a lot worse ten years ago, they’ve made it a lot better throughout the years. Yeah, I think in the race it will be a different story because we have to manage tyres most likely, so it would be a lot more fun if we had the possibility to push nearly as hard as in qualifying throughout the whole race. That would be the ultimate test so tomorrow will be quite a bit easier in that regard, but still, it’s a long race.

    CL: Yeah, as Seb said, physically it’s demanding but I also think that mentally it’s quite demanding because obviously being a track circuit you cannot lose any concentration and the first mistake you make you pay (for) it so yeah, I really like driving here.

    LH: I feel the same as these guys. They answered it exactly the same as I would answer it.

  • It is an anti-climax at the end, says Hamilton about the messy F1 qualifying session

    Monza, 7 Sept 2019: The following drivers who qualified at the top attended the post-qualifying session FIA Press Conference on Saturday: Charles Leclerc (Ferrari), Lewis Hamilton (Mercedes) and Valtteri Bottas (Mercedes).
    Track Interviews were conducted by Paul di Resta:

    Q: Charles, you must have to pinch yourself at the moment, to come here on the back of that win in Spa, to claim pole position in front of Ferrari’s home crowd. And when you get that reception when you draw up, it must be incredible?
    Charles LECLERC: It feels unbelievable. Already on Wednesday in Milan was just incredible and today to see so many people feels absolutely amazing. Happy with the pole but it’s a shame that at the end there was a big mess. I hoped for the last lap but that was enough with what happened for the pole.

    Q: A pole is a pole, regardless of what happened. But tomorrow there’s a big day ahead. Do you feel that you’ve got the pace to take the win to these home fans?
    CL: Yeah, I think the pace was quiet good actually during the race simulations in FP2 so it’s looking positive, better than in Spa, so let’s hope for a good race tomorrow.

    Q: Lewis, I know you’re never happy unless you’re getting pole position, but I guess that at the end of the day Ferrari were always going to be strong here. You’re on the row and at the same time you missed out on the last run because of all the tactics for getting that tow. How do you sum it up?
    Lewis HAMILTON: To be honest, I have to be grateful that I’m on the front row. We get to have a fight with the Ferraris tomorrow, which is nice. We’ve split them, so as a team it’s a really good position for us to be in. It is definitely a bit of an anti-climax that we couldn’t all go out and do that last final lap, that’s one of the most exciting ones we have. It’s crazy with this timing that we have, the system we have, where everyone backs up, everyone is trying to get a position and they times us out. They basically timed us out. It’s interesting – get pole position in the first run and then just time everyone out.

    Q: I know normally you look for free space in qualifying but it seems like the two has been extra important this year. Is it strange as a driver to have that tactic when you go into a session, knowing that you have to be four or five seconds behind someone?
    LH: Yeah, definitely. I mean on the out lap it’s dangerous for us all. There are people slowing down, you don’t know who is alongside you and that. It’s definitely risky business out there but it’s kind of enjoyable at the same time. But for us we are down on the Ferraris in a straight line, so we particularly need. I think others also do. I think it’s with this new wing, the drag is much bigger this year, so everyone is focusing on that. But honestly just to be up here on the front row, we can give them a good fight tomorrow.

    Q: Valtteri, that was quite a difficult session. You almost had a lap cancelled, just before the red flag came out but it got reinstated, and luckily because that last run didn’t come off.
    Valtteri BOTTAS: Yeah, I was quite unlucky there and also I had a yellow flag in the first run in the last corners so I had to lift off and I believe I lost the pole because of that. Obviously the last run was a bit of a mess for everyone. But the pace was good. Happy still to be very much at the front because it’s tomorrow that counts.

    Q: How much fun are these cars to drive around Monza. Is it a place you enjoy?
    VB: It’s always good fun. Definitely enjoying it and for sure I’m going to enjoy tomorrow.

    PRESS CONFERENCE

    Q: Charles, it was very close, less than one tenth of a second separating all three of you on the panel. But you’ve done it, you’ve got pole at Monza, so how does it feel?
    CL: Obviously the feeling I got when I went out of the car, hearing the crowd cheer so loud is absolutely amazing. On the other hand a bit of a shame for the team, Seb couldn’t do his second timed lap; he was very quick. I felt like a 1-2 was an opportunity even though these two guys were extremely quick and it was very, very close. But yeah, the whole qualifying was a big mess with all the slipstreaming and having the best one. But very happy with this pole position.

    Q: And throwing it forward to tomorrow’s race, do you think you’ve got a closer fight on your hands than you did last week at Spa?
    CL: Yes, I think the race pace was more positive compared to what we had the Friday in Spa, so on that we are pretty confident. But the start will be very important, as always. But there is quite a long way here from the start to the first corner so the start will be very important.

    Q: Well done, good luck tomorrow. Charles has described the quali session as a bit of a mess. Just talk us through what happened at the end of Q3 from your point of view.
    LH: Well, it’s then same as has happened for some races now. The drag is a big issue here, the tow is a key to getting a good lap. Everyone was slowing right down and also blocking the way, so you couldn’t really get through. It was pretty dangerous. I nearly crashed a couple of times trying to stay out of the way of the guys that were braking ahead of me and then people trying to come past me. Nonetheless, Charles did a great job. I was a little bit unfortunate with Kimi spinning in front of me, so I had to lift in the last corner. That was really our pole lap lost there. It would have been nice to have obviously been able to compete on that last lap, get to really thresh out the cars and see who really had that little edge right at the end.

    Q: Was there more time in your car?
    LH: Definitely. Definitely. But I’m sure it’s the same for all of us. The track progresses so you can find little bits here and there. Also, I was quite close behind Kimi, so I was losing out a little bit through the corners, so you are trying to find the right compromise. But tomorrow there’s still a long, long way to the finish line so we’ll try to put ourselves in the best position. This is great for us to be able to separate the Ferraris and we can work together as a team tomorrow and try to overhaul him and fortunately not have the Ferrari in the way this time… Vettel.

    Q: Valtteri, another quite messy qualifying session, with your first time having to be reinstated and then what happened at the end of Q3, so do you feel that the whole thing was a bit of a compromise for you?
    VB: It definitely was. I think it was compromised for sure for many drivers so in that kind of messy session it’s always good to be ending up in the top three. The same for me as for Lewis, and I was actually more far back. I had the yellow flags for Kimi so I had to lift off properly and I also feel I lost the pole there. It’s annoying when it could have been possible but it could have been a lot worse today. I hope we can really learn something from the last run because everyone pretty much missed their lap. There were two cars going slow at the front and no one could get by. So not ideal but we are here, very much close to the front and it’s going to be a good fight tomorrow.

    QUESTIONS FROM THE FLOOR

    Q: (Christian Menath – motorsport-magazin.com) First part of the question for you Charles: could you talk us through, I think you were behind Seb at the beginning of the lap then did you decide on your own to just go flat-out and make it to the line on time? And for both Mercedes drivers, did you think about ‘OK, I have to go fast now otherwise I won’t make it,’ or is it something that you’re just relying on the team what they say to you?
    CL: To be completely honest, the plan was that, in the first run, Seb was giving me the tow and in the second run, I will give him the tow. So, I actually went out of the box in front of him, and then there was the huge mess after Turns One and Two and the McLaren and a Renault – I don’t know whoever that was – they stopped in the middle of the track and we had nowhere to go. Seb overtakes me there, because of the mess, because obviously we were aware it was quite tight on time, and then I stayed, basically, behind Seb, until the last straight where I’ve heard also on the radio “you can overtake Seb,” so I overtook him – but I had no time for me either to start the lap, so yeah, it was a shame – but I don’t think I could have done much more.

    And for the Mercedes drivers, how reliant were you on the pitwall? Lewis?
    LH: Well, naturally, you’re listening to your delta, understanding whether you’ve still got time left but I tried to get through… I was supposed to be behind Valtteri but I overtook him, knowing that I needed to get further ahead, but I couldn’t overtake everyone, they were weaving and braking and it was like trying to avoid carnage all the time. So, we had a couple of people I think were holding everyone up, trying to, I guess, let people by but yeah, a bit of an anti-climax, I think, probably for all of you. Maybe they should have extended the session or something like that, so we could finish, or something – I’m not really sure how we’re going to get around this. Everyone’s brake testing and slowing down to let others past, just to get a tow. I’m not sure how we’re going to get around that in the future. But… yeah… in hindsight I wish I just went out earlier. Just got out there and got a clean lap. That would have been great.

    Valtteri, anything you can add from your point of view?
    VB: No, it’s the same. Same view for me. It was a bit of a mess and I was also just behind other cars, exit of Turn Two, and things started to go very slowly and, short on time, and everyone was pretty much in the same boat.

    Q: (Scott Mitchell – Autosport) Lewis, we heard you over the radio after Q3, and again down on the grid, that it was an interesting tactic from Ferrari – because obviously Charles was on pole after the first run. Do you think it was intentional? A clever play from them to back them up? And how unflattering do you think the whole thing looked for F1?
    LH: Honestly, I don’t know how many cars were up ahead, so I don’t know… Charles just said it was a couple of other cars up ahead so maybe it was them – but ultimately it worked out well for them. I really don’t know what else to say. It would have been nice to just finish the lap and both put the pedal to the metal but it didn’t happen and we move forwards.

    Lewis, how did it look for Formula 1, just to follow up on Scott’s question?
    LH: I don’t think it looks good but I’m not a fan so I’ll let the fans decide on that. I think fans get excited,  at least I remember I used to get really excited about watching qualifying and all the way down to that last minute, so it’s down for you guys to have an opinion. For me, just as a driver, I would have loved to have obviously driven more qualifying. One of the best stages of the weekend. I think some drivers didn’t even have a lap – is it true that Seb didn’t even have a lap? Is that right? Yep, it is the way it is.

    Q: (Luke Smith – crash.net) This is the second race in a row now that this has happened. Lewis, you used the word ‘dangerous’ both at Spa and here as well. For all three of you, do you think a qualifying format rethink it required to avoid situations like this happening again?
    VB: Well, these two tracks, we’ve seen this is really specific on the tows and I think Spa and Monza are the biggest gains on the straightline speed you can get really, being behind another car, and here especially. So, I don’t think it’s going to be an issue in most of the tracks, like at the next race where, for sure, everyone just tried to find a clear gap. But for tracks like this, it’s always been a bit like that, and maybe now a bit more extreme, with the cars getting more draggier and more of a gain being in the slipstream.

    Charles?
    CL: Yeah, as Valtteri said, it’s only on a few tracks during the season where we have this issue. I’ve got no quick fix to try and help this quickly – but maybe we can all think about to to try and understand. It has always been like this. I think slipstream has always been that way. I don’t really know what to say. We just need to analyse a little bit more, the situation. I think today was special, was definitely not the intention from our side. Obviously there was also Seb that was capable of having the pole position and we obviously didn’t want to sacrifice one car for the pole of the other so, yeah, it was quite tricky. I definitely think that situations like after the second corner shouldn’t happen when there are two cars side-by-side. I cannot go at 20kph, we couldn’t pass and I think most of the drivers behind wanted to pass but didn’t have the opportunity so, yeah, these situations have made a big mess towards the end and that’s why so many cars didn’t make it to start their laps. But yeah, that’s it.

    Lewis, your thoughts
    LH: I don’t really have an answer, to be honest. I don’t remember every qualifying session this year but it was similar last year, I think. We were all trying to get a gap, which continues to be key. In some places, you want a bigger gap, in some places it’s all about the tow, so each track’s specific. I always through they could do something different on weekends anyways, different weekends, depending on the track but it’s highly unlikely that’s going to happen.

    Q: Do you think we’ll see such an extreme case going forwards, looking at the last seven races?
    LH: I’m sure it’s going to continue. Positioning is key. If we were to… everyone going out as late as we just did there, for example, with two minutes to go, it’s going to continue to be an issue in places where you particularly need a tow. It won’t be until someone crashes that they’ll change it, most likely.

    Q: (Godina Zsolt – f1vilag.hu) Charles, Sebastian is going to start from P4 tomorrow. How difficult will it be to keep behind the Mercedes cars compared to Spa?
    CL: Well, it’s obviously going to be very, very difficult because, first of all, they are quick, secondly, slipstream and DRS are very important here – but I think the race pace looks better than what it was in Spa, so on that we are pretty confident – but for sure it’s going to be very difficult to keep them behind. As I said, I think a very good start from myself and also from Seb will be very important for the good result of the team tomorrow.

    Q: (Carlo Ferraro – Fuoritraiettoria.com) We saw more than half of the Formula Three field getting grid penalties for driving unnecessarily slowly on their warm-up lap. Do you think this may or should happen today as well?
    LH: Honestly I don’t know. It’s not our… it’s the system probably needs to shift a little bit maybe. I don’t think they should start handing out penalties. We just need to look upon it and reflect a little bit and see what we can do to make it better, make it better for the fans and make it less dangerous. Like they already made a change today that we have to finish the out lap within a certain delta time but even that’s still too slow. There’s improvements we can make, for sure, for safety but also for the spectators to watch.
    CL: Yeah, I agree and today actually is quite difficult. If you put the penalty to one, you put the penalty to the 10 drivers that were in Q3 because we were all together.
    VB: Nothing to say, really.

    Q: (Simon Istvan Janos – V4NA) We have seen a very nasty accident this morning in Formula Three at the Parabolica. There was a very high kerb. It has been removed by Formula One qualifying; what was your impression of the accident, very close to Anthoine’s accident, within one week? And my other question is if you, as drivers, were consulted before removing it today?
    VB: Yeah, obviously a big accident. I saw it afterwards. At least from me… no one asked me if the kerb should be taken off or not but my view would have been for sure because we’ve seen an accident like this so for sure and it was actually not making any difference to the track limits because people were going off the track before the bump so it was in the wrong place and wrong height obviously. I’m sure there’s a lesson learned. It’s a super high-speed place and if you hit it at the wrong angle obviously those kind of things can happen so… Definitely not so good for safety that one but I’m sure something learned today.
    CL: Yeah, I think it was maybe a bit pointless to put a kerb like this, once they said they would look at the track limits there, because anyway if you go out, you have your lap and the next lap deleted. But I was quite a fan of gravel there in the past. I think that was quite a good fix for every track limits.
    LH: Did you drive here with the gravel?
    CL: Yup, in Formula 3.
    LH: Yeah, I agree with him. It was much better when it was grass and gravel on the exit there because I remember you used to come into that corner, you kind of… you were a bit nervous going in too deep because you might end up in the wall. The grass would pull you out wide and you’d pay the price for pushing beyond the limit. So now you can go beyond the limit and that’s the biggest – for me – the biggest problem with all these run-off areas that are tarmac now. We didn’t need to be consulted about the kerb. It’s a band-aid on the issue of putting tarmac there in the first place. I don’t think they needed tarmac round there.

    Q: (Joe van Burik – Racing News 365) Lewis, on Instagram you shared an image of an article featuring Max responding to quotes from Nico Rosberg, being a critic of his driving style in Spa. What do you think of a former World Champion being so explicit about how modern day F1 drivers talk?
    LH: I don’t really think much of it, to be honest. I thought it was really funny – I think Max is generally a really funny guy so I was cracking up when I saw it. It’s interesting because obviously we know what it’s like – all the drivers have all been here and know what it’s like being criticised from the public and when [they are] in the sport moan about being criticised by people from the outside and then when drivers retire they become those critics, so it’s an interesting dynamic. And also some of those… unfortunately drivers become irrelevant when they retire and ultimate have to hang on to utilise other people’s light to keep them in the light and so… but that’s the way of sport, I guess.

    Q: (Fabio Seghetta – Tutomotorsport.com) Charles, did you think that you had more advantage over the Mercedes cars during free practice or do you think that this gap has been reduce during qualifying?
    CL: I think they’ve been quick all weekend, to be honest. I expected them to be very quick today. The straightline speeds are not as different compared to Spa. I think we were surprised to see them so quick on the straights during free practice. I think it was the same in qualifying, so yeah, I think it’s been the same from free practice to qualifying.

    Q: (Giovanni Messi – News Formula One Italy) Charles, do you think that here Ferrari can be better race pace than in Spa, looking also at the time that we see in free practice yesterday ?
    CL: Yeah, as I said earlier, I think in FP2 the race pace was a bit more positive compared to the race pace that we had in FP2 in Spa. It looks a little bit better but again, here the tow and the DRS has a bigger effect, so it’s going to be difficult to lead.

    Q: (Christian Menath – MotorsportMagazin.com) Considering the weather forecast for tomorrow, for rain, did any one of you change the set-up for the rain, raise a bit more wing than you would usually have gone for for qualifying?
    LH: Position is everything, so you want to go quick on the straight so no, you want to take absolutely everything off as possible to go as quick as you can.
    CL: Same for us.
    VB: Yup.

    Ends

  • It was very frustrating without DRS, because the car was good: Jehan Daruvala

    It was very frustrating without DRS, because the car was good: Jehan Daruvala

    Thoughts from Shwartzman, Armstrong and Daruvala

    Robert Shwartzman, winner, flanked by Marcus Armstrong,, left and Jehan
    Daruvala 3rd, All three are from PREMA Racing. An F3 image

    FIA Formula 3: Hello and welcome to today’s FIA Formula 3 press conference following the opening race here at Monza. We are joined by the top three finishers from Race 1. Your race winner Robert Shwartzman from PREMA Racing, in second place Marcus Armstrong from PREMA Racing and in third place Jehan Daruvala from PREMA Racing. Robert, you promised some attacking manoeuvres coming up through the field yesterday, you certainly delivered. How was your charge through the field?

    Robert Shwartzman: It’s been really fun. I enjoyed it a lot. All three of us did really nice manoeuvres when overtaking. At the beginning I was behind Marcus, and actually Marcus was getting past the field and I was trying to stay with him and pass who he had passed. There was some nice manoeuvres, some tricky ones, especially at Lesmo 2 when I made the move on Max [Fewtrell]. It was quite tight but everything was fair and nice. Basically then Marcus was leading and I was second. We had good pace so I knew that we could get a gap, and then the safety car came out for the first time. After the restart my target was just not to make any stupid mistakes in Turn 1, just to continue, and Marcus had a good restart and a gap so I didn’t have any chance to attack. I just stayed behind and after two laps, when the DRS was enabled, he let me pass in order to work together to build a bigger gap. I got by and my target was simply not to make any mistakes and continue pushing. For three or four laps I was in front and then the second safety car came out. I heard that the driver was fine, which is obviously really important. It looks really big. The first lap that I passed I didn’t even realise where the car was, it was just debris on the track and nothing else. Only after some time did I realise the car was actually on the fence. I got told it was quite big so I’m happy that the driver is okay.

    FIA Formula 3: A first win for you since Paul Ricard, a big boost for your title hopes going into the final few races of the season. How much of a breakthrough does this feel?

    Robert: It felt like quite a long time, definitely. We were quite close, like P2 or P3, but yeah something was missing but today I felt that the car was really good. We had the pace to win and all three of us were just doing our jobs to get the win. Everything was fair and nice, so that’s the thing. I’m really happy that I won today. It was really tight. I had a lot of pressure from my teammates, it was hard, but today I’m happy that finally I got the win.

    FIA Formula 3: Congratulations. Marcus moving on to you now. Could you talk us through your race and the battle you had with Robert for the lead?

    Marcus Armstrong: It was an exciting race. The first lap I don’t know where I finished, maybe third, so that was pretty exciting and everything sort of went to plan. For whatever reason Christian [Lundgaard] wasn’t leading the race so that was a bit of a surprise because he was very quick yesterday. I don’t actually remember how I overtook them, there was so much action in that race I can’t quite remember it. The pace was pretty good because we got to the lead and pulled out quite a reasonable gap over [Richard] Verschoor. Then there was the safety car and Robert was behind me. It wasn’t easy because I obviously know that Robert is switched on and I had to surprise him a little bit, which I think I did. I managed to lead again for the first two laps after that before the DRS was activated. I felt as though I was destroying my tyres out in front, having to push so hard to break Robert, so I decided to let him go and just follow in his slipstream, use DRS and try and attack in the last few laps. People didn’t get to see what should have been a good last lap battle, but obviously we’re thankful that [Alex] Peroni is okay.

    FIA Formula 3: It was a very significant result for PREMA as well, to get a one, two, three finish at a home race. Does this result just prove how good this team has been this season?

    Marcus: Absolutely, especially here at Monza in front of all the team. A lot of people have come over from Grisignano to watch the race this morning. It was cool to see everyone under the podium, and also to have Guillaume [Capietto] on the podium with us was special. As I said on the radio, I’m very grateful to be a part of such a fantastic, well-organised team, and I think us finishing in the top three is almost our way of giving back [laughs].

    FIA Formula 3: Well done today. Jehan moving on to you now. P3, but obviously the safety car at the end did end any hopes of a tight scrap between the three of you. How did you approach your race and how did you feel it went?

    Jehan Daruvala: I think it was similar to the other guys. My start was really good and I got into a decent position behind Rob. My main problem in the race was that I didn’t have DRS the whole time, so it was very frustrating for me because the car was good and I felt I had the pace to also fight with the guys for the win. It was frustrating. I was fighting cars with DRS around me and I didn’t have it. I was using a lot of my tyres in the middle sector to try and break the DRS of the cars behind. At the end, when they were fighting, I got really close but on the straights I just couldn’t keep up. That was a bit disappointing for me, but again, to come third at Monza with no DRS is a really good result.

    FIA Formula 3: Slipstream here is so important, and the DRS is so powerful, does it feel like damage limitation, in a way, to still get a podium finish?

    Jehan: Like I said, I’m not really concerned with the result, I’m just upset that I didn’t have the chance to fight with the guys for the lead. I was just sat there hoping for something to happen, but I’d rather have been in the scrap for the lead.

    FIA Formula 3: Well done today. Robert, moving back to you now. You started P8 today and fought through for the victory, I imagine you’ll want to repeat that tomorrow?

    Robert: Sure. Tomorrow is also going to be an interesting race. I’m not sure about the weather because before it was said that there may be rain, but from the free practice I’m quite confident with the car we have and how everything is going, even in the rain. Whatever happens we’re going to fight, as today, and surely try just to collect some more points for the weekend.

  • P3 was terrible and it was painful: Hamilton

    DRIVERS

    1 – Charles LECLERC (Ferrari)

    2 – Sebastian VETTEL (Ferrari)

    3 – Lewis HAMILTON (Mercedes)

    TRACK INTERVIEWS

    (Conducted by Timo Glock)

    Q: Well done for today. You seemed to be totally in control of the weekend so far and you got a really good lap in. How did it feel like in qualifying for you?

    Charles LECLERC: It felt good. Obviously the first sector was not exactly what I wanted, especially in the first corner, we had to go very slow to prepare the lap because there was a lot of traffic. I struggled for that a bit, but after that from the second corner onwards then we were very strong and it felt amazing.

    Q: It seemed like you were the only guy who stayed out of trouble on the out laps, because everyone struggled to find a clean spot, but you managed it really well, or not?

    CL: Yeah, that’s what I asked actually when I was in the garage – to not really care about the slipstream, it was just too much of a mess to prepare the tyres and the lap overall, so ~I wanted to be alone and yeah, it worked out, so I’m happy.

    Q: Good feeling for tomorrow for the race? 

    CL: Yeah, we were struggling a little bit more during the race pace yesterday, so we need to work on that. But, yeah, looking at the pace today I’m pretty sure we will be strong.

    Q: Seb, well done today, P2. I think when I saw you in the middle of the same like Charles, you struggled on the out lap to get the tyres into the right window. Was that the key problem today?

    Sebastian VETTEL: Yeah, I mean in the end it’s good that we secured the first row. To fight for pole, I was sort of in the queue; it doesn’t help, but no excuses. We look forward to the race tomorrow. I think we have good pace in the car, so hopefully, we can show it also over, what is it 44 laps?

    Q: But you didn’t seem that happen on the long-run pace yesterday. Do you think tomorrow it’s going to be OK when it’s a lot cooler?

    SV: Yeah, I think it should be better. The car was better today, so we’ll see. Obviously temperatures should drop overnight, which makes a difference, but it’s the same for everyone.

    Q: Thanks. Lewis, first of all, I think we need to talk about your mechanics. They did an awesome job.

    Lewis HAMILTON: Absolutely. P3 was a terrible session for me. Of course, it’s painful because you know how many people work so hard to build those parts and then you know how hard the guys work to put the car together and I knew that was going to be a tough challenge. But my guys are just faultless, they always work and give 110% and I’m so grateful for that. After that I was really just trying to pay them back with a good qualifying session. Considering I missed P3 and a lot of P1 actually I’m really grateful I’m up here.

    Q: You were nearly crashing, I think even Valtteri on the out lap, because it was a mess as well. Was it for you hard to get the tyres in as well, because everyone seemed to be affected by that?

    LH: Yeah, that was a bit slow. Obviously he was trying to keep the tow of the car in front, so I was trying to hold behind him and everyone was behind me, so it’s really tricky. But nonetheless Ferrari have done a great job today, Charles did an exceptional job and I hope we can bring the fight to them in the race tomorrow.

    Q: I think your long-run pace was very good yesterday and there is a chance for you on the long straight to attack the Ferraris straight away. Are you happy that it’s going to be 10 degrees cooler tomorrow? Is that helping you out?

    LH: I don’t know, I’d have to ask my engineers. Either way I’m going to give it everything and hopefully give these guys a good race.

    PRESS CONFERENCE

    Q: Charles, many congratulations, you dominated all three segments of qualifying. Can you tell us how it feels to be on pole by seven tenths of a second?

    CL: It obviously feels amazing. It was very tricky, especially in Q3 I struggled quite a lot, the start of the lap was always very, very messy, because there was quite a lot of traffic with all the cars around but in the end I managed to do the full lap correctly and I’m very happy. I definitely did not expect to be that much ahead, but very happy with my lap anyway.

    Q: Well, came close to winning in Bahrain earlier this year, so given your level of dominance so far this weekend how confident are you for tomorrow?

    CL: I don’t know. I think we have been quick since FP1 but once we did the race simulations in FP2 we weren’t as quick, so I think it’s not going to be easy tomorrow. We will try to give everything. The gap is quite big today but it doesn’t mean it will be like that tomorrow, so we will working hard to improve on the race run we did yesterday and we will see.

    Q: Well done again. Sebastian, you said on your cool-down lap “what a mess”. Can you just describe the session and particularly Q3 from your point of view?

    SV: Uhh, messy! I think I was getting into a sort of a rhythm, maybe it took a little bit longer for me today to really get a hold of the car but it felt quite good. But then in Q3 it was quite messy, with everybody trying to get a tow and a lot of queuing for the last corner, which made it very tricky and, yeah, obviously the tyres then are not where they were probably supposed to be and being further back it I think it wasn’t ideal. Anyways, Charles did a better job today, also with that, so now looking forward to tomorrow. I felt the car was quite good, which is the most important thing so let’s see tomorrow with the change in ambient conditions, in track conditions, what the race is going to be like.

    Q: Thank you and good luck tomorrow. Lewis, it’s been an impressive comeback by you and the team after your crash in final practice. First of all, any lasting physical effects from that crash and how was the car in qualifying?

    LH: Firstly, it’s been an interesting weekend so far. We struggled obviously a little bit in the first session with some problems and then, yeah, I made a big mistake this morning with the change we made and it just didn’t feel great out there and obviously I had that incident. But the guys did an incredible job, incredibly diligent, to perfection – taking the car apart and rebuilding it. There’s so much pressure on those guys through the weekend and naturally I don’t ever want to put them in that position, but I think they relished the challenge and so really proud of them. So going into this session I was just hoping that I’ve got the car in the right place and ultimately hoping I can pay them back with a good qualifying session and I think today was really smooth and I think the team did an amazing job in terms of where they put us out there. It was a little bit tricky when everyone was slowing down but nonetheless, congratulations to Charles, he’s been so quick all weekend. But I think in the long run we can at least give them a bit of a challenge tomorrow. I think a bit of the straight speed, which is where generally all the speed is, it’s usually not there so much in the race, so hopefully we’ll be there or thereabout with them tomorrow and can put in maybe some interesting strategies, we’ll see.

    QUESTIONS FROM THE FLOOR

    Q: (Christian Menath – motorsport-magazin.com) Question for you Seb. You said you didn’t get into the rhythm very fast; it took a bit of time for you. Do you have an explanation for that – because yesterday it looked like you lost quite a lot time on the straights?

    SV: No, not really. I don’t think we lost time on the straights. I think nothing out of the ordinary, so… No, I think it was quite tricky to get the car where I wanted it to be for one lap, and it was better in qualifying. I struggled a bit yesterday afternoon, this morning, but, as I said, by qualifying it was fine and then obviously towards the last part of quali it was a bit messy again, not ideal preparing the lap, so yeah, I’m not happy with the final attempt, it wasn’t clean. So, yeah, I’m not worried, I think pace-wise it was looking quite good and let’s see what we get tomorrow. Obviously a big change in terms of temps. Let’s see how we adapt.

    Q: (Erik Bielderman – L’Equipe) Lewis, when you don’t claim the pole position, like today, do you head into the Sunday’s race in a more excited mood because of the challenge that awaits you?

    LH: When you’re on pole, you’re always the happiest, naturally – but nonetheless, yeah, I’m happy that we have a fight. I think we knew that coming here, that it was going to be challenging. We didn’t know where the Red Bulls or Ferraris would be but we knew the Ferraris would be extremely quick given that they’ve been fastest on all the straights throughout the year. That’s a big gap: seven-tenths is a huge margin but nonetheless I think in the race trim it looked like it was a lot closer. So yeah, I’m excited that I’m in a position where hopefully I can try and battle these guys tomorrow. That makes it more fun for us, for me – and for the fans, hopefully.

    Q: (Godina Zsolt – F1Valag.hu) Charles, congratulations, you said a few weeks ago that Sebastian is doing a better job in terms of tyre management. Were you able to work on that this weekend, and don’t you think that this could be the key to win this race tomorrow?

    CL: Well, I’ve been analysing quite a lot Hungary. Actually, maybe it looked worse than it actually was but there’s definitely some work to do on my side on this. So, we’ll see if tomorrow it pays off. I changed a few things – very small things – but details always makes the difference at this level. So, yeah, we’ll see tomorrow if it’s any better.

    Q: (Jerome Pugmire – AP) Question for Charles. Obviously you’ve come close to winning in Bahrain and also in Austria. Bahrain was nothing to do with you. What have you taken from those two races; those two close calls that you can perhaps take into tomorrow to give you a bit more of an edge?

    CL: I mean obviously Bahrain was nothing to do with me, so not much to take from there. Austria, I think there were lessons learnt but I think I already showed it after in Silverstone, as I already speak about the aggressivity (sic) level I had with my opponents – but apart from this, nothing. I guess, at first it feels a bit weird when you are coming to Formula 1 and you do your first laps in the lead. So, the more laps I am in the lead, the more comfortable I am. And this feels good.

    Q: (Michael Schmidt – Auto Motor und Sport) Possibly to all of you. When you were queuing up in your out-laps, what was more important for a perfect lap afterwards: to get a good tow or to have the tyres in the window? And was it possible at all to achieve both targets?

    LH: On the perfect scenario you got the tow and the tyres in the window. In Q3 I don’t think so, no because everyone was backing up. Obviously we had that really slow section with Hülkenberg, I think it was, and then Valtteri and myself and then again in the next one, everyone again was backing up into the last one, so I think the second one was a little bit of a better position, a chance, but still, it’s very, very tricky. I don’t think they were both… they were optimum for all of us.

    Q: Charles, how was it for you?

    CL: Yeah, at first I really targeted the perfect slipstream for the first run in Q3 but after that I really felt that the tyres weren’t ready for Turn One and I actually lost quite a bit of time. So then, for the second run in Q3, I just asked the team to send me whenever the car was ready, to be alone and to try to do the job alone, without slipstreams, which I think, yeah, in my opinion, on my car, it felt better to have the tyres in the right window than having the slipstream. So, we went as soon as possible – but obviously we found anyway some cars in front.

    Q: Seb?

    SV: Well, obviously it was more important to get the tyres in the right position for me. Or in the right place. I was, on both laps, too close to the cars in front and the tyres not right to start the lap with. So yeah, it was a lose-lose. The straights were good – but I was too close and lost quite a lot, I think also in Sector Two.

    Q: (Scott Mitchell – Autosport) Lewis, coming here, obviously Mercedes has the upgraded engine across for you and Valtteri and the customer cars. Two out of six of those cars have now had failures: Pérez’s car on fire and then Robert’s in the Williams in the qualifying. For you, going into tomorrow, does that present any concerns or do you just trust your team to analyse it and make whatever countermeasures they need to make.

    LH: I don’t know the details of why the engines have gone, so I have nothing to worry about currently because I don’t know anything about it really. I’m sure, when I get back, I’m sure they’re trying to analyse it and they’ll give us a bit of an idea – but still, I’ve just got to keep my head down and do what I do and what will be will be. There’s not much I can do about it, so there’s no point worrying about it.

    Q: (Luke Smith – crash.net) Charles, you spoke earlier in the season about your need to focus on qualifying and the build-up through all three sessions. I guess a third pole of the season proves your strategy is working; a sixth race in a row you’ve out-qualified your team-mate as well. Do you feel that you’ve cracked the code to F1 qualifying now?

    CL: I’ve done some changes on qualifying and yeah, I definitely feel the difference, and feel it’s going the good way. As I said in Hungary, now I need to focus a little bit on the race because in some races I haven’t been as good as I wanted to. So, now I’m trying to focus on that, to rebalance a little bit and we’ll see how it goes.

    Q: (Viktor Bognar – Magyar Szo) In the past weeks, in the mainstream media and social media it’s all about burning the rainforest and efforts of the global climate change. Do you think that Formula One should or could do something more to raise awareness to this problem? And do you agree with the way how Formula One promotes efficiency and sustainability at the moment?

    SV: I think it’s a very important subject. I feel that Formula One has a wordwide operating platform and should do a lot more. I don’t think that just promoting the efficiency of our engines is enough plus I think unfortunately a large part of our technology inside the car will not go onto the road so you can argue about the necessity. So I think – not just on track but also off track – I think Formula One could do a lot more and should set an example because I think it is a very serious matter and serious subject.

    CL: OK, to be honest it’s only my second season in Formula One. I’m not completely aware about how everything works on the engine so maybe I need a bit more experience to understand all of this.

    LH: I’ve been here for a long time. I don’t really know what their current plans are but I think they are working towards a goal in trying to improve the carbon footprint that we have as a sport. But I think up until now the job we’ve done in the sport – they haven’t done anything, particularly I think when Bernie was in place, there wasn’t a lot being done then. So we are in the position where we are now, beginning to shift. If you look at the V8s and the V10s, we are now using a third less fuel than we used to use in a race distance, so that’s already a step forward but there is absolutely more that we can do. Also, on things like the amount of plastic that’s used throughout the weekend – I’ve got three bottles right here. I’m not opening them, but someone will drink these and that becomes waste so I think the amount of waste that comes out of a race weekend, also through all these weekends, we can do a lot about that and so I’m trying to encourage Ross and his team to make a change. And as a team, I’m pushing Mercedes to be the leaders in that, so hopefully soon you’re going to see some positive changes from our side.

    Q: (Jerome Pugmire – Associated Press) Lewis, we very rarely see mistakes from you. Can you put your finger on what happened there? Was it a loss of concentration? Can you figure out what happened, you made that mistake?

    LH: You’re looking way too deep into it, man. Shit happens. I’m only human. I think my track record has been pretty good but it sometimes happens and yes, it’s frustrating and it never feels good, whether it’s in your first year or if it’s in your 13th year whatever, it doesn’t really make any difference but you can always learn from it. So there’s always a silver lining, there’s always an opportunity to pick yourself up, to rebuild and there’s always an experience with your guys and I think today was a massive challenge for the team. I think they did an exceptional job and I’m really happy, generally, with the job that I did in qualifying, so collectively it’s a positive. But I go in the back of the garage and I see my broken parts and I’m like ‘oh my baby’ but they’ll fix it, they’ll fix those parts hopefully or maybe I’ll have to put them up in Toto’s office or something and sign it and say sorry.

    Q: (Christian Menath – Motorsportmagazin.com) This queuing thing in Q3 seems to be a bigger topic this season. There were quite a few occasions now where things happened like this. Do you think you need some stricter rules, what is allowed there? At some point it looked a bit ridiculous when other cars were on their fast lap and came and they were queuing up, five, six, seven cars whatever.

    SV: I’m not in favour of any more rules. I think we have too many anyway.

    CL: I didn’t personally feel that it was worse than last year, at least. I felt that last year was as bad, actually. Everyone is trying to have a tow, which is normal but yeah, I agree with Seb also. I don’t think it should be another rule written in the book for this particular case.

    LH: I don’t remember ever going that slow before last year.

    SV: I think what should change, actually, what we should take from this – seriously – is that tyre-wise we shouldn’t be so much on the limit so obviously you’re fighting for a tow and so on but you’re also fighting to get into the optimum window which years ago it wasn’t that critical, whereas now it is. So you’re fighting for the best spot on the track which will hit the climb or the peak next week in Monza for finding the right tow because it does make a difference but it has also been part of those type of track, let’s say. But I feel if we had better tyres we could play with probably a bit more speed and so on.

    LH: I agree with Seb. Every weekend they put the pressures up so high it’s crazy, which again makes it a little bit harder for us but the tyres are so hard so getting them working, and they’re talking about taking blankets off for the future, we’ll never get temperature in the tyres if they do that. I think this year is definitely the slowest we’ve been. Today felt a little bit dangerous at one point because we were going round turn 15 on the kerb and there was a car coming and I couldn’t move, go on the grass. I was stuck behind Valtteri and I think the next… Hulkenberg or whatever. I can imagine if I was on a lap and I was coming round that everyone was crawling around at five miles an hour it would be a bit of a worry and a bit of a distraction so I’m not really sure what we can do to stop it from happening but maybe we have to be on the pit speed limiter or something like that. You shouldn’t be able to go five miles an hour or two or whatever we were doing because we were literally going as slow as possible to let people past. I did it in Austria, I think, to let everyone by because I was the first car out there and the tow is so strong this year with this car.  They talk about the front wing being easier to follow, it’s just caused a lot more drag.  This is a draggier car this year so the slipstream is even more powerful or the tow is more powerful than we’ve ever experienced.