Questions from the floor:
Q: (Juha Päätalo –
Financial Times Germany)
Robert, it's quite good that you are one of the four that are very much in the championship battle. How good is your car going to be here and do you think you have to be more consistent than the Ferraris and McLarens to stay in the championship battle?
Robert Kubica:
Well, I think the only way now to stay close to them is to be consistent, to score as many points as possible, every single race, and that's what I'm trying to do. Apart from Australia where we know what happened, my worst result was fourth place in Barcelona and Istanbul, so I think consistency is very important as in every championship but we have to see. The car has to improve if we want to beat
Ferrari and McLaren, if you want to achieve the target of winning races this season, which is the target of the team. But as Kimi mentioned, there's a long way and the season is still very long, so we are pushing, we are trying to do the best that we can, and maybe one day we can stay in front of Ferrari and
McLaren.
Q: (Randy Phillips –
The Gazette)
Question for Kimi: looking at the championship and how close it is this year, as defending champion, do you see it as more pressure on your shoulders this year and are you expecting it to go right down to the end? So many teams are close right now. Teams are not likely to go backwards at this point, so how close do you think this race is going to be this year?
Kimi Raikkonen:
More often it always ends up very close between the top drivers, the top teams, but nobody knows. It's close now but I don't know. Hopefully we can come back and be in the front when it counts. But I don't feel any pressure. We won last year, as I said before, we were in a much worse position a year ago. One bad race doesn't really make any difference. OK, we lost the lead, we could have easily taken a few more points but it didn't happen, so we come here and try to do better and try to get back in the lead.
Q: (Paolo Ianieri –
La Gazzetta dello Sport)
Kimi, there have been some rumours about you saying that you will stop racing at the end of 2009?
KR:
There's been rumours like that for many years. I always say that I still have a contract until the end of next year. I haven't made any decision as to whether I will keep going or not. So far, that's the last contract that I have and we will see during this year and next year what happens.
Q: (Dominic Fugère –
Le Journal du Montréal)
Kimi, in Turkey you mentioned that Monaco and here would be two of the more important races because you had struggled at these two race tracks for the last few years. You said that there would be a good indication of where the championship would be heading. Now that Monaco hasn't been so hot, where do you think the championship is heading?
KR:
I really meant that we can see if we have improved the car and for sure we were much stronger in Monaco, but with all the circumstances that happened for us and all the things didn't really go the way we were planning. For sure we had good speed in the car and definitely a stronger position than a year ago in Monaco. We expect to be stronger here again than last year. Things can easily go wrong or right. If things go right, I don't see any reason why we cannot win here. It's too early say, but that's what we're aiming for and then we will see what happens after this race again.
Q: (Fabritsio Lazakis –
Four Wheels Magazine)
Kimi, what do you think causes the problems heating the tyres? Can Felipe maybe do it better? What happens in your situation?
