Q: You made a very, very nice clean start into that first corner on what looked to be a pretty light fuel load, we now know.
MS: Yeah, we were a little bit lighter but I guess if you see how much lighter we were it doesn’t justify all the gap we had in qualifying, it simply means that we got a very good qualifying lap in and everything worked fantastically for us. I had a good start and that was half of the race, basically, to get the gap I needed and then just sort of drove it home safely.

Q: Any bad moments after that in traffic perhaps?
MS: Actually yes, there was one particular one and I don’t know what was going on there with Mark when he came out of the pit lane. I went past him and he must have seen what car was in front of him and as I was turning in suddenly, in the sort of side line, very late, I saw him flying into me and I was really shocked. Fortunately I could open the door. It was just this little moment of me not seeing him and he would have crashed into me. I don’t know what was going through his head, what he was trying to achieve there, but that was a bit of a moment.

Q: Rubens, you used a two-stop strategy compared to the three of the bulk of the race and had quite an eventful race. There was a lot going on in the first corner behind you.
Rubens BARRICHELLO: Well, actually, I just saw that because I had a good start, I was alongside Jenson and we were going into the first corner pretty clean. Everyone had a problem there because it is really a corner where you practically stop. I think I may have touched one of the Renaults but I didn’t see that there was a Williams behind but there was no space for another car there.

Q: Can you tell us what happened on the opening lap when Kimi Raikkonen took second place? Did you see that?
RB: No, I had too many things to do before I could see! When I opened my eyes I saw that I was in fifth and he was already in second, so I didn’t actually see what was going on.

Q: And then there was the incident with Takuma Sato, where he collided with you in the first corner. Did that damage your car?
RB: Yeah, the car was strange afterwards. I think I lost a part of my bargeboard and aerodynamically, especially at high speed, the car felt a bit strange. So, I was lucky that the race was getting towards the end, basically. I am sorry to say it but I think it was a bit too amateur from Sato to do that because he wasn’t in a position to actually try and overtake. He came completely sideways and luckily, the same as Michael just mentioned, I saw the nose coming and I just took avoiding action and I was lucky that nothing else broke on my car. He could have eventually overtaken me because he was fast enough but he didn’t need to be that lap. He wasn’t in contention on that lap.

Q: Michael, that was Ferrari’s fourth one-two of the season. It looks as if it is just getting better or perhaps is the opposition falling away?
MS: Well, I think as Jenson just mentioned, it wasn’t a very clean race for him and then Takuma was very quick but didn’t finish the race and he had this collision with Rubens and we won’t find out what could have been if he had finished. We are there, we are strong, you know, we do look better due to other circumstances at the moment.

PRESS CONFERENCE

Q: Michael, those opening laps must have been absolutely remarkable because you built up a lead of 17 seconds in just seven laps. What was it like driving those laps?
MS: Well, it was fantastic to see how much I was able to pull away. I think I was greatly helped by Kimi being second and not being able to be passed by whoever was behind because I felt that the consistency of his pace compared to Takuma and the Renaults and Rubens would have been different. So this gave me the edge in the race and I just had to save that until home.

Q: So, how confident were you at that stage?
MS: I was pretty confident because I knew strategy-wise what that meant to me in coming out straight behind all the other guys after the pit stop. It sort of gave me the confidence that that would be 90 percent of the race already.

Q: And that educated guesswork on the tyres - no problems with those?
MS: No, didn’t look like it.

Q: Certainly didn’t! Rubens, two stops instead of three stops, are we going to see you using a different strategy to Michael every time from now on?
RB: No, it is not that. I mean, sometimes you think that if you are first in qualifying you can pretty much take your pace and do everything you can. Looking back on it now I had the pace to fight with Michael eventually for a qualifying lap but just before that we thought that Michael was a little faster so to be second on the grid, if that was the case, would have been bad because, you know, on that dirty side and so on, so you had to play with a little bit of luck. So then another option was given to me and I liked it and I think the tyres were doing a superb job and eventually it worked out, worked out in a way that it was good to pass almost everyone but not Michael, so it was still good to start seventh and finish second but not good enough not to be in first place.

Q: You mentioned that the car was damaged when Takuma tried to overtake you. How hard could you push, because at one point we thought it was possible that Jenson could catch you?
RB: Well, I had to push really hard to begin with when my tank was full. That was the period where I knew I was damaging my tyres but I had to push because there was no other way and I was in the middle of the traffic so it was really hard. Eventually when we had the crash it took me two laps to get the handling of the car, to know what it was doing. It was a little bit worse on the high-speed corners, it was definitely worse over the bumps to turn 10 and 11, and then the team told me Jenson is coming faster and you have to push again. But the car didn’t have the pace of before so I couldn’t go much faster than that anyway.

Q: Could you see any damage to it when you got out?
RB: No, no, no. The front wing was intact, which was good and I was asking on the radio. I felt a bang but I was lucky that when he was hitting me I was turning left and I just saw the nose coming too fast and I just took that avoiding action which I think kept me alive.

QUESTIONS FROM THE FLOOR

Q: (Paolo Ianieri – La Gazzetta dello Sport) Michael, yesterday you seemed very confident, very optimistic about the race, but were you expecting it to be so easy?
MS: I don’t think it was that easy in reality. I think all of us have explained that Kimi being in front and being second sort of created that huge gap and that gap sort of stayed for the rest of the race. Yeah, there were times that I could have gone a little bit quicker, but not by the margin I was able to open in the first laps.

Q: (Ottavio Daviddi - Tuttosport) Michael, yesterday you said that you were not worried about the start and today you did a very good start. Is there a secret to this?
MS: No, there is no secret. It has worked the first four – and even the fifth race in Barcelona, which was the exception, and I try to explain it every so often that there was only one car overtaking and that was the reason for Trulli going earlier than everybody else rather than better. And Monaco was an exception. In Monaco, we were clearly not performing well at the start, we didn’t have the grip available at the start and that’s why we lost positions. If you go back to all the other races, and including this one, we do good work at the start.

Q: (Peter Hess – Frakfurther Allgemeine Zeitung) Rubens, last year you were much closer than this year, you were able to challenge for victory. What are the reasons that you’re not able to do that this year?
RB: We seem to be playing with the strategy a lot more. I don’t think I’m any faster or slower than Michael than last year to this stage. I think he had a very strong opening to his season. He was superb in qualifying laps and the race. By this stage, I think we are getting closer and we just keep on working and try to beat the man but it’s obviously very difficult.

Q: (Hormazd Sorabjee – Autocar India) Michael, six out of seven, complete domination, but to do it at this stage of your career, 200 Grands Prix on, at a time when younger blood should be giving you a hard time, what’s the motivation, how do you just keep doing it and how would you compare your driving now to ten years back when you won your first championship?
MS: I think you used the right words, young blood, and I do have my blood checked every so often and when I listen to the result, I sound very young. So I think it is one which says the age, and another says what you are. I’ve said it very often, I feel pretty young, not my age. I’m having fun, I have a fantastic team behind me who give me the opportunity to do what I’m doing. It’s great. I just love what I’m doing.

Q: (Paolo Ianieri) Rubens, the fact that Kimi was second for so many laps, how much did that help you get second position? Do you think that if Jenson or Taku was able to be in front of Kimi you could still have made it to second place?
RB: Well, there’s two ways of looking at it. There’s the way of you saying that there were people with three stop strategies being held up but they were holding me up as well. Whenever Takuma was free he was obviously a little bit faster than me at that stage because he had no fuel at all and he was coming into the pits. But eventually I had the pace to go fast. When you have such a good car and that amount of fuel, you have to push as hard as you can to be with the guys in front before they come into the pits and then push even harder. But they were holding me up as much as they were holding up everyone else.