TV unilaterals:
Q:
Felipe, a beautiful lap to watch. You were a half second quicker than your team-mate in Q3 but a little bit slower in Q2. Talk us through that...
Felipe Massa:
I managed to make a fantastic lap in Q3, which is the most important one. I did a great lap the first try and the second try without a mistake. In Q2, I didn’t make very good laps and I was struggling a little bit on the grip from the tyres on the lap. Also I didn’t do a very good last sector as well, just braking a little bit too early at turn 14. It was just stupid mistakes. Not really mistakes, but just a stupid lap. Then I managed to put everything together in Q3 and did a great lap.
Q:
Apart from the disappointments of Melbourne, you obviously felt confident coming here with a different track surface and with
Ferrari having such a great record here.
FM:
Definitely. Our championship is starting now. What happened in the last race was incredible and we didn’t expect that. We did a very good job during the winter but coming to the first race and having a lot of problems like we had was not expected. But hopefully now we can manage to put everything together to have a very consistent, quick and good championship.
Q:
There was a lot of talk before qualifying about the potential for rain here on Saturday and perhaps even tomorrow. How did that affect the preparation for qualifying and the way you ran qualifying?
FM:
To be honest, it did not affect it too much. You just needed to be starting the session by going out straight away, so if it was raining at least you could put one lap on paper. Everybody did that. You saw at the beginning of the qualifying everybody going out, just a little bit afraid that if the rain comes at least you had a lap, so I think it was not a big difference compared to a normal qualifying.
Q:
And what were the conditions like right at the end there?
FM:
It was okay. We had a couple of drops, but it did not affect the performance on the track, so it was no problem at all.
Q:
Kimi, it was a very quick lap in Q2, a 1min 34.1secs, the fastest lap of qualifying, but talk us through your Q3 and how you feel in terms of the race tomorrow?
Kimi Raikkonen:
I was not sure what happened with Q3. The car is good, but I just couldn’t get the grip. I didn’t get the best out of it, but anyhow I am in second place. It is a good place to start and we should have a strong race car. It is going to be a long hot race tomorrow and we don’t know about the weather. But I think we can look forward quite happily to it.
