Q: Three wins in a row, looks like great weather, fantastic atmosphere: how do you see the race going tomorrow for you?
MS: Indeed, I think it’s going to be a very interesting race, a tight battle I believe. It’s going to be interesting to see how the other cars sort themselves out into the first corner because there honestly are some potential drivers among one another and it will be interesting to see how that all works out.

PRESS CONFERENCE

Q. Michael, obviously it all went wrong in the Variante Alta didn’t it? Did you hit the kerb too hard, what happened there?
MS: Honestly the time I lost over there wouldn’t have been enough to beat Jenson. I think it wouldn’t have been enough anyway. For me it is not a surprise because he put in a very good lap and I sort of anticipated that they would be strong here this weekend.

Q. You were two-tenths up going into the last sector…
MS: Yeah but if you look all weekend we were very good in the mid-sector in particular, sort of even in the first sector and maybe a bit slower in the last sector.

Q. You didn’t do a huge number of laps in the second session this morning, do you feel you were missing that little bit of track time?
MS: No we’re pretty happy. We’ve been here in the wintertime testing the car so we pretty much knew what we wanted and what we had to do. We felt there was nothing more to achieve.

Q. And in the pre-qualifying session, you felt that one was okay as well?
MS: Yeah. It was low grip being again the road sweeper and it was reasonable but not perfect.

Q. I mentioned the short stints just now, the last one was nine laps in Bahrain. Do you think other drivers are going to copy that strategy?
MS: Ask the other drivers. I don’t know.

Q. Have you been worried that they are going to follow you and you are then going to change it all together for this race?
MS: It could be. It could be that some people would like to adapt and do a certain strategy, but it is all speculation. We’ll leave it open until tomorrow.