Q:
Does your role include driver coach, giving advice to drivers or anything like that?
PdlR:
That’s not a part which is included in my contract but obviously I am just trying to be helpful for everyone. I am just trying to listen as much as I can and know what the biggest problems are. For example this afternoon I will walk around the track and see if there is anything I can see. During test sessions I am driving around the corners on the side-road just to see with my eyes if I can help. If I see anything I don’t like I go to the guys and I just tell them. I am very open and they can rely on me fully. They know I will always help, that’s my role.
Q:
Rubens, I think in Turkey it will be 257 times you have turned up to a race. Looking back at the last race you didn’t look like a driver about to retire, giving Fernando quite a hard time. What was that like?
Rubens Barrichello:
It was bad. We were fighting for 10th place. I wish it were first and second. That would have been a lot better. He was having plenty of problems with his rear wing and I was having a lot of understeer on the car. Unfortunately in
Formula One nowadays it is still very impossible to overtake. Hopefully in the future, if slicks really come into play, that will be the way to go. To play with a lot less aerodynamic devices and with a lot more grip from the ground and from the tyre that will give us the chance to follow other cars. As soon as I caught him I turned the revs down because there was nothing I could do. I was five kph slower on the straight. I feel very motivated. You talk to the young guys and they are all sort of fed up with
F1, too much to do, PR. My life has kept on getting better and better. The first year with
Honda I really did a lot of PR. But they put things in place and I am focussing and putting my energy on the car. I have been working quite hard. Last week I did 140 laps around Barcelona which I thought was phenomenal. I still feel young on that side. I am just going to prove Pedro wrong. I think I have many more years left.
Q:
Going back to the car. Do you think you are close to scoring points?
RB:
We had a god improvement last week and obviously the first race was what it was and we would have finished in the points already with the car. But the first race is always a bit crazy anyway. In Malaysia we were far out and in Bahrain we had the pace but we did not have the straight line speed to overtake. But I think we are very close to the points. I think Barcelona is open on that. The car is a good time better. I don’t know how much improvement the others made because last week was very difficult to read. It was slicks on the car, people with less fuel and more fuel, so it was really difficult to see. But the car is better – definitely better. We have made an improvement and hopefully that is going to put us on Q3 all the time and that will lead us to points and more.
Q:
It would be a nice way to celebrate your record. Apparently the celebrations are going to last several races?
RB:
There is a little bit of confusion. You ask everyone and the numbers seem to go up and down, so we decided to take Turkey because that is the races I have taken part in. The ones that are not happy with that, because it seems too early, then we have three races to celebrate – the Brazilian way.
Q:
Fernando, the car has been modified quite a lot. Outward particularly – things that we can see – but obviously inwardly as well. How are you feeling about the modifications since Bahrain?
Fernando Alonso:
I think we made a step forward in terms of competitiveness of the car and we will see this weekend what the result is. I think as Rubens said last week it was difficult to read times as it was a mix of slick tyre and more or less fuel between the teams, so you know we tried to concentrate on our performance and our car and I think we gained a couple of tenths in the car. We will see if it is able or not to make us easy in Q3 and not have the problems we had in the first few races and hopefully regularly get in the points. Obviously we were in Australia, we just had one point in Sepang and were not in the points in Bahrain. This is not possible for us, so we need to raise our level and hopefully here is the starting point.
Q:
You have been in the top four here for the last five years including a win from pole position. What are the chances of maintaining that record?
