Q: What did you see of Michael’s incident in the tunnel?
RB: I was further behind, so I couldn’t see anything. All of a sudden I saw some pieces flying and then I saw Michael slowing down with the suspension (broken). Nothing that I could have seen.

Q: And what about the Sato engine blow-up early in the race?
RB: Umm. To be very honest with you, I thought that they should have put a flag out for him before because there were already three laps when he was already pushing out too much smoke out of the engine or out of the gearbox. Something was happening there, it was obvious. There was major drama. I got the (my) car just as I was going into the guardrail. I was zero per hour but I would have damaged my car because you could see absolutely nothing.

PRESS CONFERENCE

Q: Rubens, I expect you wanted a bit more for your birthday than third place but all in all you must be fairly happy with it.
RB: Yeah, like I said in the other room, I’ve been so lucky today and I think that’s the present that I got from God because the car didn’t behave at all in the way we thought. There was one time when I was going into Casino Square and the car just hit the ground badly and I locked the outside wheel just like if I had a puncture. I radioed to the team saying ‘I’m coming in, I have a puncture’ and the car felt reasonable to finish that lap, although I was locking the wheels strangely. Something must have broken on the rear suspension or something but because I had the gap to Montoya, they said if I could do (1m ) twenties, we would still be OK and then we could carry on for a few more laps, bring you in earlier and just try another set of tyres. But even though with the other set the car got better, it was very strange because it was hitting the ground and it wasn’t doing things nicely from one side to the other so I was just a passenger. Today I’ve been very lucky. I’m not even sweating, because I really had to carry the car around just to finish my run.

Q: You were overtaken by Montoya early on, what happened then?
RB: You know after the safety car period the pace was really slow, I had cold tyres at that time and he risked everything and I thought he was going straight on actually. So I thought that there was no point for me to close the door and lose my nose or something. From the beginning it looked like it was going to be a race of lots of moments. When Sato exploded his engine it was very dangerous and the backmarkers were horrible today. It was a race just to keep on going. With the problems that I had, it was difficult to keep the car on the track. With the others, I wasn’t even worried.

Q: Was that right from the start, your problem? Did you make contact with anything?
RB: No, no, no. When I started I had a reasonable start but Takuma was already gone, so we must learn from him what he’s doing because I was still stationary when he went by, so I didn’t know if he anticipated the start or something like that. It was really strange. My car wasn’t behaving very nicely, but twenty laps into the race, that thing happened so there was no point in pushing.

QUESTIONS FROM THE FLOOR

Q: (Alastair Moffitt – PA News) For all three of the drivers, how important is it for Formula One as a sport not just to see a different winner but to have such an exciting race?
RB: Well, a different winner with the same red car would have been very nice! (Laughter) But, after all, I think everyone said, it was just an eventful race, there were lots of things going on and I think the television people must have liked it.

Q: (Matt Bishop – F1 Racing) A question for all the drivers, obviously the safety car does have to slow the field but do you think that possibly the safety car slowed the field too much and maybe a faster safety car should be used?
RB: I think that it is just that Monaco is very different to the other places, to be honest. It is difficult for any other type of car to keep a higher pace and it wouldn’t have made a difference. I cannot judge, because I haven’t seen the accident. It was slow but it is Monaco, it is very tight and it is difficult anyway.

Q: (Thierry Thassin - RTBF) Rubens, you mentioned you had a problem with the brakes locking the outside wheel. Do you know if your team-mate had the same problem because when the incident happened in the tunnel, he locked the outside wheel.
RB: Erm, no, I don’t think so, because I have asked the team if he had a problem that I should be aware of. But, just like Jenson mentioned, we had to warm the brakes quite heavily throughout the weekend just to get the temperatures right for the first lap, so I guess Michael was warming them up. I was suffering behind the pace car to keep them warm so I guess he was going through the same thing.