Q: And there was poor old Rubens going round and round Valencia, working hard while everyone else was on holiday! Is that true?
RB: Huh, huh. So I deserve to win, thank you!

Q: It’s interesting, you were the only top race driver from the top four or five teams who was actually testing.
RB: I was probably the only one, if you think about it. There were several other teams, and although they had the test drivers there, of the ones who were racing, I was probably the only one. Tough business. I wish I could have been in the Maldives!

Q: But after this one, you’re going back to Brazil.
RB: Yeah, yeah. So they can go back and test – for me.

Q: But I think it’s an interesting point that you were the only race driver to go back and test and maybe some of the other teams were thinking ‘hey, why aren’t our guys going back to test?’
RB: I tell you, it wasn’t my choice. To be very honest with you, the first day I was useless. It was no good at all. Even though I had a good night’s sleep, I was no good. I felt like my helmet was up here (draws line just below his eyes) and things were acting like… I couldn’t react to everything. I was lucky it was raining, so I didn’t do many laps. The next day was OK, so I was able to test, but I actually told the team that I think Badoer was probably more useful than I was because to go back and forward was a bit too much. If you talk about Malaysia, it’s one flight of twelve hours, but from Australia was like two flights of 12 hours so I wasn’t in good shape on the first day of the test; the second, I was OK.

Q: I don’t know how warm it was there for you, but it’s obviously going to be very warm here. A lot of people say that it was an advantage for you in Melbourne, that it was cooler, but how much are you prepared and how much is your tyre company prepared for the kind of conditions we are going to see here? And how much of it is guesswork?
RB: At the end of the day, it’s a guess for the two companies, Michelin and Bridgestone. There’s nowhere in Europe you can get a track with that sort of temperature so Valencia, I guess, was the closest one. We had something like 25 degrees on the asphalt whereas here you can have more than 40. But the tyre that I tried to pick for here wasn’t the fastest one, just because it was fastest in Valencia didn’t meant it was faster here or good here, so you had to go for a feeling, you had to go for experience on the race track, just guessing, just really transporting every data that you had to Malaysia and see what comes. Even so, it’s very difficult for everyone because if it’s a bit hotter than in other years or a little cooler in other years, then you’ve made a bad choice. So it was a bit of guessing and a bit of safety on the two tyres that we’ve brought.

Q: But Rubens, you are saying that the first qualifying session isn’t necessarily that important?
RB: Especially in Melbourne it was not important. I’ve learned over the last four or five years that if somebody doesn’t run for an hour, and there are no cars on the track, and you come back, the track is at least a second slower, the first time out. The second car has a bit better (track conditions), the third and so on. After five cars have run, the track gets to a minimum of the problem. So knowing I was the first car out, there was really no point, there was no point at all. I guess Malaysia is going to be a bit different, because the track is ready all the time, and with the heat… Sometimes being the first car it’s actually cooler, so you can actually get an advantage from that. But having said that, I just thought there was no point in pushing in the first qualifying session and it’s going to be that for the whole year, even because you’re sitting at the press conference, and you tell us ‘have you noticed that Juan Pablo was first in the first qualifying?’ You always haven’t noticed, because it has gone by to the second qualifying so quickly. So there’s no value for whoever finished first, second or third in the first qualifying.

Q: Would there be more value if it was on a Friday, do you think?
RB: I think so because then it’s a different day, you have time to get it in the press, you have everything. At least it gives you a chance to push. I won my first Grand Prix last year when on the Friday I spun, if you remember, so I was dead last on Friday, and then I came on Saturday and I was on pole. So at least you have different situations. If it was last year like this year, I would have ruined my chances of being on pole.

Q: One other question, before I throw everything open: I believe there’s been a fire at Maranello over the last few days. Has it affected the racing team at all? What do you know about it?
RB: Nothing. Has there been a fire there? I left my car in Monaco, so it’s OK.

QUESTIONS FROM THE FLOOR

Q: (Fredrik Huldt – Auto Motor & Sport): There’s been a lot of talk about tyre testing up until now. Most of it, I guess, has been running on dry tyres. There’s a possibility of rain, at least, on Sunday. Can you comment on that?
RB: We’re very much prepared. We’ve been doing some work on wet tyres too. If it rains, maybe it will be a bit cooler, so maybe nicer? But apart from that, there’s no comment really. We’re quite okay, prepared.

Q: (Paolo Ianrieri): Looking forward to the next race in Bahrain, what sort of information do you have at this stage, a completely unknown circuit in terms of racing?
RB: At the press conference today, a guy said it was more humid and hotter than here, so I told him we were going to die inside the car. That’s the only information I have because before I had heard it was hotter but not humid at all. So that’s pretty much like Brazil. But I’ve only seen the racing track on paper. I’ve no idea which is Shanghai and which one is Bahrain. I’ll probably get there very early just to get a feel for it.