Q: Kimi, taking second place at the start was obviously key to your strategy.
Kimi RÄIKKÖNEN: Yeah, finally the start worked for me and helped a lot. I think the car was good all the time, but not exactly perfect but I was very happy with the car. I just tried to push and keep up with Felipe. I knew that he was going to stop a bit later, so just before the first stop I had quite a bit of traffic but then at the second stop I managed to get in front of him. It was a good day for me and the team. Q: You had a very good run when Felipe came in for his second stop, very quick on the circuit at that point.
KR: Yeah, we needed to be. I was a bit further away from him than I really wanted to be. But that’s racing. I couldn’t really stay close enough but it worked out perfectly at the end, so I couldn’t ask for more. Of course, you would rather start from the front, it makes your life easier, but we knew that we should be OK in the race. It all really depends what happened at the start and we had a pretty good start this time.
Q: Your first win since Melbourne at the start of the season. Talk us through the last couple of months and what this win means to you now
KR: It’s nice. I think we had a bit of a hard time but I kind of expected to have a bit of a difficult time so OK, people always think that you’ve lost it when you don’t have a good result but we just worked hard and try to get it right and I think we can still improve and we’re still not where we want to be. But we are definitely much happier with the car since the last test. In the last races we just couldn’t get it together. I think it seems to have good speed now so we must keep it up in the next races.
Q: Felipe, it was obviously very close. It looked like you didn’t get the best of the traffic when it mattered most to you today.
FM: Yeah, for sure I lost the race today because of the traffic, definitely, because in the first stint I was supposed to be more than four seconds in front of Kimi, and it worked perfectly because the track was free, and I was 4.8s ahead or something. And then I came out in front of him again and then he had three laps more than me in the second stint which is supposed to be the same, you’re supposed to have more than four seconds in front. But I was so disappointed with the traffic in the second stint. I lost too much time. Even when you are not very close to the car in front, you lose so much downforce that you cannot follow the car and you just lose speed and that was the biggest problem I had today. Unfortunately, I lost the victory because of that, because the car was great during the whole runs. Whenever I was alone I was doing very very quick laps, so it was a shame. But anyway, it’s very good for the team. I’m very happy to do the first one-two in the championship and also looking at McLaren, that they are still quite a bit in front, it is good to have a weekend like that.
Q: Taking you up on that point about the traffic, do you mean specific aspects of other drivers’ behaviour, or do you mean in general, just the loss of downforce?
FM: Well, the people I had were maybe three or four cars in front of me and they were fighting but I was the leader and sometimes you make the strategy not counting the traffic and the traffic can change everything on your strategy. So the first stint worked perfectly, but the second stint didn’t work. As long as I passed the traffic, I was opening a normal gap compared to Kimi that I was supposed to open. In the first stint it worked, in the second stint it was supposed to work but it didn’t work.
Q: Kimi, your feelings going to Silverstone?
KR: I think we had a very good test there so hopefully we get the parts that we tried there for the race. We were not able to get all of them here so that should help us. Our car seems to work well there. Testing is always testing but I think we are pretty confident that we’re going to have good speed there also. You never know; the weather there can be very tricky but we go there this weekend and we try to do the best and hopefully can try to win.
PRESS CONFERENCE
Q: Kimi, how much of a relief is this victory, because obviously you haven’t had a win since the first race of the year, and you’ve had one or two problems within the team, so is this a bit of a relief to have won here?
KR: It helps always, definitely, but I think we knew what our problems were. We try to improve them all the time and I think the work is starting to pay off now. It maybe took longer than we expected but I think in the end that it’s good that we got the win and we’re kind of back in the right place now. We just need to keep it up and improve.
Q: And you must be really pleased the way the strategy worked as well.
KR: Yeah, I think we expected it to be good, so it wasn’t such a big surprise but it helped that we got a good start and we were in second place. Without that, I think it would have been very difficult.
Q: Drivers always practise their starts, but have you been specifically working on it? I seem to remember you did a fair number of starts at Silverstone in the test.
KR: Yeah, we did but actually it’s nothing to do with me, really. We just improved our start system and I think it worked this time. The last few times it hasn’t worked perfectly anyhow, so it’s up to the system really, more than anything else.
Q: How hard was Lewis pushing you during those early stages?
KR: I didn’t even look where he was, really. I knew that we were going to go longer than them so it wasn’t anything… even if he was close but he wasn’t ever close enough to even try so I just tried to get everything working and try to keep up with Felipe.
Q: Felipe, you appeared to lose time to Kimi during the second stint. You mentioned traffic just now; was there anything specific or was it just general traffic?
FM: Well, I think when you stay more than three laps behind a car it’s not normal. Sometimes, if you say OK, I was not completely on the rear wing of the car, but enough for the car to see me in the mirrors. With the cars we have now, sometimes when you start to get close, you are starting to lose downforce so you cannot get close enough to pass the car. But we are leading and they are being lapped so they need to let us by. In the first stint the strategy worked perfectly. I was building the gap I was supposed to, to be in the front, and the second stint was supposed to be the same because the car was fantastic. As long as I passed the people, I was very quick again, so it was a shame but in a way it was a good result for the team and also a good result looking at the McLarens.
Q: How was the car on the softer tyres?
FM: The car was great on whatever tyres I was using. The only problem was that I was already behind Kimi on the softer tyres and when he came out of the pits, I was having slight graining. And then it was just impossible to get closer so… The rules mean that people at the back stay at the back. The only chance to pass is something in the strategy or maybe at the start.
QUESTIONS FROM THE FLOOR
Q: (Heikki Kulta – Turun Sanomat) Kimi, did anything come to your mind in the last laps about what happened in Adelaide corner five years ago?
KR: For sure, I remember that, but I wasn’t expecting to have the same problem. It was an unfortunate thing that time, but I made sure that nothing like that would happen.
Q: (Flavio Vanetti – Corriere della Sera) Felipe, ok for the traffic, but was your second pit stop a little bit slower than it should be?
FM: I don’t know. We need to check the numbers. Maybe. I didn’t check on it. I felt it was a bit, but maybe you saw the numbers. If it was slower, it was, so…
Q: (Sal Zanca – Associated Press) Kimi and Felipe, is this the beginning of the expected Ferrari revival?
KR: I think so. We didn’t expect to have the problems that we had in the last few races, so I think we are back where we expected to be. It wasn’t that we lost something. Maybe we just didn’t get everything out of the car. Everything works well and we try to keep it up and improve.
Q: (Mark Hughes – Autosport) Kimi, how tough was it to stay within striking distance of Felipe? Some drivers this year have said it is tough when behind another car to prevent tyres from graining… Did you have that problem?
KR: No, I didn’t have a graining problem, but it hurts you when you are behind someone. You think they are quite far away, but it still hurts. Once I was in the pit lane, my car improved suddenly, so it was something to do with when you follow people very closely. It is never easy. You try to hang on there and stay close enough. For sure, the traffic did not help anybody today. But it is part of the racing and sometimes you are lucky with it and sometimes you are unlucky.
Q: (Frédéric Ferret – L’Equipe) To both Ferrari drivers, can you explain where the Ferrari car is better now compared to two weeks ago?
FM: I think we improved it well everywhere, so it works every corner and it is just better everywhere.
Q: (Juha Päätalo – Financial Times Germany) Kimi, how far from perfect was the Ferrari car today, for you?
KR: I think the car was good, but it is never perfect. There are always places where you can improve and you can always push forward, so even the car sometimes it is very good and you can still improve some areas. We can still improve and get the car quicker.
Q: (Michael Schmidt – Auto Motor und Sport) Felipe, which was the car that you were trying to lap for three laps?
FM: Many cars… It was the two Red Bulls, one Toyota, which was more difficult, and also a Williams as well. It was a big fight from them.
Q: (Paolo Ianieri – La Gazzetta dello Sport) Kimi, how well do you feel in your car now?
KR: Like I said, it is not only the car, but a lot of areas like in qualifying and in the race and there is no point to talk about it here. As long as we know what we want and expect to do, that is the main thing. We are working all the time to improve those areas and if we can do that it will help me a lot also.
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