FIA Post-Qualifying Press Conference – Korea at LinesMaker

FIA Post-Qualifying Press Conference – Korea

Dri­vers: 1 – Lewis Hamil­ton (McLaren), 2 – Sebas­t­ian Vet­tel (Red Bull), 3 – Jen­son But­ton (McLaren)

Q: Lewis, con­grat­u­la­tions, your first pole posi­tion in over a year. I would have thought that you’d have had a smile as wide as the sea between here and Japan. But you don’t seem to be too happy? Is every­thing okay?Lewis Hamil­ton: No, I am happy. I am very happy. Happy to be here and very proud of what the team have been avail­able to achieve over the course of the last few races and for Jen­son to have won the last race and for us to be on the front two rows again and the only ones com­pet­ing with Red Bull I am very, very happy about it. But tomor­row is the day that really counts.

Q: Sebas­t­ian, it seems a strange posi­tion to see you the right of Lewis and not sat in the mid­dle here. No pole posi­tion for your­self. Did you expect this renewed chal­lenge from McLaren today?Sebastian Vet­tel: Well to be hon­est I think McLaren looked very, very com­pet­i­tive yes­ter­day. I know the con­di­tions were com­pletely dif­fer­ent but you could see that they were a fair chunk ahead of every­one else, includ­ing us, as well as this morn­ing in the dry so they looked extremely quick. But I think, once again, we pushed them very, very hard in qual­i­fy­ing and got very, very close. I think closer prob­a­bly than they expected and closer than we expected in some regards so I think we did a very good job in qual­i­fy­ing. Also we saved all our prime tyres, which I think will be cru­cial for tomor­row. We had only a rough idea this morn­ing with a lit­tle bit more fuel in the car. I think we are in a good posi­tion. It is not a long way down to the first cor­ner and then Turn Three is a lit­tle bit exposed so we will see. It is a long race, a lot of things can hap­pen. I think tyre wear will be cru­cial. Jen­son did a very, very good job last race in par­tic­u­lar so I think that, again, will be very impor­tant tomorrow.

Q: Jen­son, third place for you. If tyre wear is so vital and the teams haven’t got as much data as they would nor­mally expect at this stage of a week­end, how hand­ily placed are you for another race victory?Jenson But­ton: Well it is not per­fect, we all want to be on pole posi­tion and con­grat­u­la­tions to Lewis for get­ting the pole. He has been pretty quick all week­end and tough to hold onto. I am rea­son­ably happy where we are. It is not per­fect, but we can race very well from here. As Seb said there is a lot to play for still and we really haven’t got a clue what is going to hap­pen tomor­row in the race in terms of tyre deg on high fuel, what the car is really going to feel like on high fuel, so really a bit of an unknown. But look­ing for­ward to the chal­lenge tomorrow.

Q: Lewis, after all your dis­ap­point­ments in recent races and what­ever does hap­pen tomor­row, how much does it mean to you to be hit­ting the track run­ning and being on pole posi­tion and being the fastest man out in the car this weekend?LH: Well it is prob­a­bly one of the first pos­i­tives I have had for a while and to be back on pole is a great feel­ing. But, as I said, tomor­row is the most impor­tant day. I have had some dif­fi­cult races in the past so hope­fully will try to redeem myself tomor­row. As long as we can get some really strong points for the team as they have put an incred­i­ble amount of effort into get­ting us to where we are today so a big thank you to them and I hope that tomor­row me and Jen­son can repay them.

Q: Lewis, first pole for you and McLaren this year. How much sat­is­fac­tion do you get from this?LH: Well it is very early days and it is not the most impor­tant day but it is a great start. As I was just say­ing the team have worked incred­i­bly hard all year to catch up the deficit that we had to the Red Bulls. Par­tic­u­larly the last few races, at least the last five races Jen­son has been mas­sively quick and we have been able to com­pete with them and con­stantly be on podium but not really fin­ish ahead of them on the podium too often. For­tu­nately after the last race and here today we are as com­pet­i­tive as them and hope­fully tomor­row we can con­tinue with that performance.

Q: Just describe what sort of work you did this morn­ing as you are vir­tu­ally start­ing from scratch?LH: No, we pretty much drove the same car as we had on Fri­day. Made a cou­ple of changes as the track improved but I think we have made a big change to the set-up com­pared to the last race and that made a big difference.

Q: In terms of tyre wear what sort of pro­gramme was there this morning?LH: I think every­one antic­i­pated it would be quite poor the degra­da­tion of the tyres and look­ing at the Red Bull’s long runs it doesn’t look so bad. The per­for­mance over one lap is longer than what the spe­cial­ists antic­i­pated so I think tomor­row is going to be very, very sim­i­lar to what we had in last race.

Q: After the prob­lems that you have had the last few races you just seemed to nail Q1, Q2, Q3. Every sin­gle one you were fastest so that must have been a sat­is­fac­tion as well.LH: Yeah, I think we have had sev­eral Q1′s and Q2′s at the top of the leader­board but never really been able to pull through in Q3 and par­tic­u­larly the last cou­ple of races I have not had my last run so it was quite impor­tant that we got that today. It made a sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ence oth­er­wise I don’t really know if Seb improved, I am sure he did, so it was impor­tant that we got that lap.

Q: Sebas­t­ian, obvi­ously you would have loved to have been on pole posi­tion but again it has been a pretty tough day today. I don’t sup­pose you learnt that much yes­ter­day and really all the work was done this morning?SV: Well I mean yes­ter­day was a dif­fer­ent day. Dif­fer­ent con­di­tions. But we saw already that McLaren is very com­pet­i­tive this week­end. In the end it doesn’t really mat­ter the con­di­tions. I think if your car is quick, if you feel the bal­ance is there, then you are quick no mat­ter what con­di­tions and we were a lit­tle bit behind or quite a bit behind, includ­ing this morn­ing. But again we pulled our­selves together and when it mat­tered most for today we were there, Q3, we were very, very close in the first run. I thought we would have a crack at pole. My sec­ond lap was very good again. There wasn’t much left but, obvi­ously, Lewis had a very good lap and deserves pole. It was close. Closer than many peo­ple thought or we thought as well as they were look­ing so, so strong this morn­ing and the pace came so easy for them. At least by the looks of it. It is good that we made a fair step in the right direc­tion and caught up so tomor­row should be an inter­est­ing day. A long race. We saved all our prime tyres so there is a lit­tle dif­fer­ence there. Whether we can use that to our advan­tage or not remains to be seen, but I think we are in good shape. It is a long race here. Tyres are rea­son­able soft, both com­pounds, so we will see.

Q: You pre­dicted multi pit-stops yes­ter­day, does that still stand?SV: I think so. It did look a lit­tle bit bet­ter this morn­ing than some peo­ple thought so I think five stops is too many. Two is impos­si­ble so some­where in between. You know three or four stops is not a big secret. We know that if there is a lot of tyre wear we have seen races where we end up three stop­ping and races where we end up four stop­ping. All in all we should be in good shape and look­ing to tomor­row. Also con­sid­er­ing that the last week wasn’t the eas­i­est, and prepa­ra­tion wasn’t easy, but very quickly we refo­cused and as I said we were there when it counted. Not enough this time, but tomor­row is another day.

Q: Jen­son said just now ‘we don’t know where we are’. What do you think of that quote?JB: When did I say that?

Q: In the unilateral.JB: Did I? Well, I will have to watch that back. I think if I did say that, in terms of the race, [I meant] run­ning high fuel. We haven’t done that yet, so we don’t know how com­pet­i­tive we’re going to be yet, but look­ing at the pace today, I would say that we would be rea­son­ably competitive.

Q: Is that some­thing you’ve done, Sebas­t­ian? Did you do high fuel runs today?SV: Yeah, we did a lit­tle bit. You can’t turn the world upside down. Yes­ter­day, we had no prepa­ra­tion in dry con­di­tions because it was wet. This morn­ing we still had only one hour. I think we had a lot of work to do and we got most of it done, so we were very happy with this morn­ing, gave us direc­tion with the car, with the con­di­tions, with the fuel. The runs we did didn’t look too bad. We will see.

Q: Jen­son, what are going to be the prin­ci­pal fac­tors in the race?JB: Being quick, and that’s some­thing we’ve been pretty good at for the last cou­ple of races, in terms of con­sis­tency through­out the whole race. It’s very dif­fi­cult to know what to do in terms of strat­egy tomor­row because again, we haven’t really run the tyres. We know that they’ve got a short life but how short and if you can make any dif­fer­ence by try­ing to look after them? It’s very dif­fi­cult to know, so a lit­tle bit unknown tomor­row so we will see. I should think everyone’s look­ing for­ward to the race tomor­row espe­cially us three at the front. It should be a lot of fun out there. Find­ing our feet is going to be the first thing on high fuel, to see how the car feels and acts with that much fuel on board. Today was a rea­son­ably good day for me. I thought we would be able to fight for first but Lewis was just too quick today. All in all, a pretty good day and it looks good for tomorrow.

Q: Does the chas­sis change make any dif­fer­ence at all?JB: No. I didn’t think about it at all. It’s got a num­ber one on it now, so that’s quite nice but no, it doesn’t make any dif­fer­ence at all. At this high level, the tubs them­selves are iden­ti­cal, so that’s not an issue.

QUESTIONS FROM THE FLOORQ: (Andrea Cre­monesi – La Gazzetta dello Sport) Sebas­t­ian, what tyres were you using on the last run, super soft but used or new, because you used one set in Q1?SV: We used new tyres in both runs of Q3.

Q: (Andrea Cre­monesi – La Gazzetta dello Sport) Jen­son, why did you change the chas­sis this morning?JB: There was a prob­lem at the back of the chas­sis where the engine bolts on, so they couldn’t fix the prob­lem here and it wasn’t worth risk­ing try­ing to fix the prob­lem here so that’s the rea­son why they changed the chas­sis yes­ter­day. The guys did a great job of turn­ing it around, I think they left pretty early last night con­sid­er­ing they had a com­plete chas­sis change, so thank you very much to them on both sides of the garage, so cheers.

Q: (Dan Knut­son – National Speed Sport News) To any of you, lots of pit stops tomor­row, how much of a con­cern is the pit exit?JB: If you look at how many times we’ve exited the pits over the last two days and also last year, there’s been one inci­dent and that was in wet con­di­tions. It’s very dif­fer­ent in the dry; it’s more unusual to lock up into turn one. It obvi­ously does make it a lit­tle bit tricky if someone’s exit­ing and you’re rac­ing that per­son exit­ing the pits, know­ing where to really place the car through the apex but I’m sure every­thing will be fine tomor­row with the pit exit. I don’t think we will see any issues.

Q: (Livio Orri­chio – O Estado de Sao Paulo) Lewis, please under­stand this ques­tion; for a dri­ver who broke a series of 15 poles of a com­peti­tor you look very sad, you haven’t smiled. Is there any rea­son for that in your behav­iour to the crit­i­cism you have received in the last few races?LH: No, no. I am happy, I am happy. As I said, it’s been a tough sec­ond half of the sea­son and it’s great to get pole. It doesn’t really mean a huge amount because tomorrow’s really what counts. As I said, I’m happy, I’m proud of… I am proud of my team, the sup­port that I’ve had from them has been just incred­i­ble, so to be up here is kind of… it’s a great feel­ing for that but tomor­row is the most impor­tant day so I look for­ward to that.

Q: (Michael Schmidt – Auto, Motor und Sport) Lewis, you were get­ting close to Mark Web­ber in the last sec­tor, did it affect your lap time?LH: No, I saw that he was back­ing off and my last sec­tor seemed to be OK, to be hon­est. Through the last cor­ner was a lit­tle bit slip­pery but I can’t really say that was because of him. I think it was the tyres really falling off. I don’t know how many sec­onds ahead he was but I think the gap should have been enough.

Q: (Joris Fior­iti – Agence France Presse) Jen­son, you were the fastest guy in Japan apart from in qual­i­fy­ing, where you missed pole by a very tiny mar­gin. Your car, the McLaren, seems to be the fastest car here too. Should we see that as an indi­ca­tor for the end of the sea­son, McLaren becom­ing faster than the Red Bulls?JB: If you looked at prac­tice in Suzuka, yes, we were very quick and the same here. I think some of it is due to maybe us run­ning less fuel than other peo­ple, espe­cially com­pared to the Red Bull because they seem to be a lot more com­pet­i­tive in qual­i­fy­ing. But as a team, in terms of the car, yeah, I think we’re in a great place right now. As I said, I really don’t know how the race is going to go tomor­row but you’d think that it would be between us and the Red Bulls. So we will have to wait and see, but I don’t think Fer­rari are that far behind in terms of con­sis­tency. Over one lap they maybe don’t have the pace but in terms of con­sis­tency we saw them very strong in Suzuka so they might also be there tomor­row. It’s a great way to end the sea­son. As a team, were obvi­ously dis­ap­pointed that we couldn’t get this per­for­mance ear­lier in the year but I think we’ve done a great job through the lat­ter part of the sea­son and it can only be good for next year. Obvi­ously there are rule changes but hav­ing a good base at the end of this year, going into 2012, it’s some­thing that we really need, I think.

Q: (Joris Fior­iti – Agence France Presse) Sebas­t­ian, was there a sense of dis­ap­point­ment in the team not to score all the pole posi­tions until the end of the season?SV: It was never really the tar­get, to be hon­est, because it’s so far away, there are so many races, but the run we’ve had so far is quite impres­sive and even today we are still on the front row and we’re not so far off. I’m very happy with that, but as I said, now you men­tion it, it would have been nice, but it has never really been our tar­get. Tomor­row is more impor­tant for us.

Q: (Kate Walker – Girl Racer) Lewis, you said that you had prob­lems with your tyres los­ing grip on the last sec­tor in your qual­i­fy­ing lap; are you con­cerned that this might dis­ad­van­tage you com­ing off the line tomorrow?LH: No, no. Gen­er­ally, when you’re dri­ving these cars, par­tic­u­larly in qual­i­fy­ing, you do quite a slow enough lap that you don’t take too much out of the tyres on the first lap and when you do your lap, nat­u­rally you’ve extracted every­thing. If you’ve extracted every­thing from the tyres, they should start going off in the last sec­tor. That’s nat­ural, but once they cool down again, as they will be for tomor­row, the grip will be back to exactly where every­one else has it.

Q: (Fred­eric Fer­ret – L’Equipe) Sebas­t­ian, you’re sec­ond and Mark is fourth and the two McLarens are on the right side of the track. Does that bother you for the start tomorrow?SV: Not really. I think our side is maybe not the clean­est side, but we’ve seen a cou­ple of times this year that in the end there’s not a big dif­fer­ence. I think the tyres are dif­fer­ent to last year so… we are see­ing dif­fer­ent starts to the races. Jen­son had a very good start at the last race from sec­ond, didn’t you?JB: Can’t remember.SV: So we will see. It’s a bit tricky here because it’s not a long way to the first cor­ner or the first two, then there’s a long straight after that, and another straight after that so it could be interesting.

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• FIA Thurs­day Press Con­fer­ence – Brazil
• FIA Fri­day Press Con­fer­ence – Abu Dhabi
• FIA Thurs­day Press Con­fer­ence – Abu Dhabi

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