Q: Michael, a very strong second place for you, splitting the Renaults. How much was it defined for you having to sit behind Giancarlo Fisichella?
Michael SCHUMACHER: The race result didn’t really have anything to do with that, because Giancarlo was going at a certain pace, which at certain moments I couldn’t match and clearly, as the weekend developed, it started very well for us and then it sort of went away from us over the weekend which we obviously have to understand and look into. But we were simply not quick enough today. Q: Obviously he won the drag race into the first corner but you obviously carried a lot more fuel into the race, a lot more than the Renaults.
MS: Yeah, I mean if you consider the amount of fuel we carried, it would have been easy to achieve pole position yesterday but our strategy was obviously different. It worked out at the Nurburgring. Here, it would have worked out had we been quick enough, but because the speed wasn’t there it didn’t work out.
Q: Your thoughts on that second place and a good solid eight points.
MS: Yeah, absolutely, it’s eight points. You have to understand at certain moments what is possible and what is not possible. You can only try so much yourself. You have to rely on your package, and again, it didn’t work out today but there’s a long way to go until the end of the season, so as we have seen, I was probably not so happy just to gain two points in the last two races. Now I’m reasonably happy to lose only two points. It’s the way it’s going to go and we’ll have to see what happens through the year.
PRESS CONFERENCE
Q: Michael, you’ve been quite confident this weekend, so when did you realise you didn’t have the necessary pace?
MS: Basically when I had free air and couldn’t really make up enough ground.
Q: That was after Giancarlo’s pit stop?
MS: Yeah, although I wasn’t that close behind him before the first pit stop, so already there it seemed very difficult. But then we obviously knew that maybe later in the race, with a better set of tyres, it may work out differently. But I still had the option and possibility to close down but as we couldn’t do it in the second stint, we couldn’t really make any real impression and win any ground in terms of lap time, so it was clear it would be difficult.
Q: But you had at least overtaken Giancarlo?
MS: Sure. Knowing that I was so close behind him and saw him going in reasonably early, compared to what we could do, it was sort of clear although I almost lost it because I had a little moment in one of the corners, in those important laps, had a bit of traffic, so there were a couple of factors that didn’t really help, but I still made it.
Q: So it was a little bit tight to come out ahead of him.
MS: Yeah, because of the issues I just mentioned; normally it would have been a bit more clear.
Q: Obviously second place was not where you hoped to be, but only losing two points is not so bad.
MS: Yeah, that’s the way you have to see it. You have to understand that you can’t win every race. At certain moments those guys are better than us and maybe at other moments it will be the other way around. It’s a long year to go. We will keep on fighting.
Q: (Fritz-Dieter Rencken – The Citizen) Michael, the incident where you say you nearly lost it. Was that at turn seven or was it somewhere else?
MS: Turn seven.
Q: (Mathias Brunner – Motorsport Aktuell) Michael, you were so confident yesterday of the race pace – it’s hard to believe where the pace went. Are we talking about a tyre problem here because the car apparently worked fine?
MS: I don’t believe it’s fair to blame anything on one area without studying, because, as you quite rightly say, in qualifying, if you put a bit of maths in, I would have been two or three tenths quicker than the pole position time, so it would have been reasonably possible to achieve that, but, all the long runs we did on Friday and Saturday were very quick and quite good. In the race we just weren’t able to quite match it in this situation for whatever reason. We have been here for testing in the winter, it’s sometimes a wind direction change, a temperature change or whatever, could just trigger things to shift one or the other way. We’ve seen it in the past and we’ve seen it in the last test we did here and maybe that’s what happened today. Obviously I’ve just been in the car and not been able to analyse what’s happened. I don’t know exactly what’s going on, I just know that its not what happened before.
Q: (Mike Doodson) To Michael & Fernando, the two of you have dominated this season and given us lots of pleasure. But both of your successes have been the results of team-work. Do you ever think of the prospect of having a straight race between you? Does that prospect appeal to you?
MS: So you want us to go back to go-karts? I think in any kind of motor racing, you have to rely on the team. It’s the nature of our sport – that team element and it’s a very interesting one, to me at least. Even in go-karts, you have to have a package. It’s not like playing tennis or soccer, no, even in soccer, you have to have the team.
Q: (Livio Oricchio – O Estado de Sao Paulo) Michael, when Alonso made his first pit stop, the gap was about 12 seconds and when you came out, the gap was similar. At that point, did you still have hopes to win the race?
MS: For me, I only start to give up when I see no sense. Most of the time that is on the last lap. Knowing the nature of the circuit where you have basically no chance to overtake, in particular if you are not quick enough. I had to give up after the last pit-stop. I drove home from then.
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