Q: It is obviously a team sport but it appears as if Bridgestone had some problems in Malaysia. Here they appear to be right back again.
MS: It is a team sport, there is no reason to say one part is responsible for a whatever, for a loss of a race. We have been winning together for five years, we have had two difficult races, particularly one. I don’t think that’s any worry as long as we find our way back on track and we seem to have.

Q: Your thoughts on this race at this point, how you think it might go?
MS: Usually, and particularly in Malaysia we have been pretty far off in qualifying. We looked a bit better in the race – still not good enough. Now we look in reasonable condition in qualifying and race performance seems to be comparable as well, so we are not too bad.

PRESS CONFERENCE

Q: Michael, nice to see you too. How is the debut of the new car – I mean, for a debut this looks pretty promising?
MS: Yeah, it certainly is. To be honest I hadn’t expected to be up in the first three before we came here for the weekend after being quite a way off in Malaysia, but through the sessions we sort of saw that we looked quite promising with the package of the new car and tyres so were are quite happy.

Q: It looked very good this morning, what changed from this morning to qualifying? In the session this morning you were quickest by a nice margin but now you are third, what are your feelings about that?
MS: I mean, the first part of this morning’s session I was quickest, but maybe that was because we had less fuel on board than the others. We had to look at the last part of the second session and I was eighth or ninth, and that is the moment everyone puts on new tyres and simulates qualifying and looking from there we are quite happy where we are.

Q: To what extent have you been concentrating mainly on race set-up rather than qualifying?
MS: You seriously have to be prepared for everything and you plan your work for both.

QUESTIONS FROM THE FLOOR

Q: (Mathias Brunner – Motorsport Aktuell) Michael, yesterday you said that you are sure the new Ferrari is a significant step forward but you wouldn’t know how big that step would be. Looking at the qualifying session, what is your impression now?
MS: As I have just said before, it is a bit more promising than I had expected, because after Malaysia, seeing the gaps, which were quite significant, we haven’t done a comparison of the old and new cars, the time wasn’t there, so you only go for your feelings and they were good but I don’t know how good, where it puts you. Such a big gap knowing from Malaysia, you don’t expect that the new car can make up everything, but it made up for most of it.

Q: (Mathias Brunner – Motorsport Aktuell) And what gives you the confidence that a gearbox failure won’t happen to your car?
MS: We are pretty certain of this. We have plenty of miles with those gearboxes, it was just one odd one, which happened to be in Rubens’ car, that seemed to have a problem. It is the first time we have had it and there was nothing we could do against it.

Q: (Livio Oricchio - O Estado de Sao Paulo) Michael, your tyres seem to offer you a good level of grip in this qualifying. Are you confident for the race too?
MS: Yeah, there weren’t any problems for us yesterday and neither today.

Q: (Adrian Rodriguez Huber – Spanish International Press Agency EFE ) Michael, do you have any words to Fernando, leading the world championship? Is he the guy to beat this year, for you?
MS: Not much to say really, he does a great job and that is why he is up there, but it is our job to push a little bit harder to make life less easy because they are having a bit too easy a time at the moment, you know.

Q: Michael, you have a charm, I believe?
MS: Yeah, but you mix up an issue which is not an issue, honestly, because the thought of it is that if someone is going to wear some crazy piercing stuff and have chains or whatever which could become a danger the rule is to prevent that to happen, and nothing else. Before you go in that direction or make up stories in that direction, you may want to look at what the rules really mean.