AP:
Not really; I think if you’re not committed to the risk, then you’re more dangerous actually in many ways. I basically drove a clean, fast race. I’ve still got the suspended sentence for Brno next weekend, but I’ve just got to drive as I normally drive. I’m a clean driver and, no matter how thinly you slice a piece of toast, there’s always two sides. I didn’t feel that I deserved a suspension, but I’ve got it and I’ve got to deal with it now.
Q:
In the first race at Pau you were battling hard with fellow
BMW ace Jörg Müller over eighth place. In the WTCC, there’s a big difference between eighth place and ninth place in race one, isn’t there?
AP:
There is, yeah. Ninth is just nobody – it’s so annoying to finish ninth. I felt for Jörg – he’s a good team-mate and a good driver, but he was carrying the weight over that weekend. He didn’t get up there into the top eight and I did, and that made my weekend really. Nobody likes to rely on the reverse grid to win races, but at this moment in time an eighth position is like a win for me because we’re just not as competitive as SEAT in these conditions. I’ve got to be very happy with that, and to get eleven points from the weekend was sensational really.
Q:
How important was it to you to have that pole position for the second race, especially somewhere like Pau..?
AP:
When I saw the weather, I thought to myself ‘I’m so pleased that I’m not down in the middle of the grid now’, because you just couldn’t see anything. Especially around a street track, it was absolutely awful; it is actually really dangerous to have conditions like that. I was really pleased that I was up there at the front, and at least I could take control a little bit of my race. The worst thing is, though, when you’re leading in the wet and don’t know the conditions, it’s easy to make a mistake because you’ve got nobody to follow. It’s quite tough to lead in those circumstances.
Q:
Although you managed to eke out a significant gap by the end of the race, you had quite a lot of pressure early on from Chevrolet’s Nicola Larini, didn’t you?
AP:
Yeah, that’s right; Nicola was quick at the beginning, and so was Rickard [Rydell]. I could see that they were only two to three tenths off me the whole race until the end, so I just drove as fast as I could without making any mistakes. I can’t say I controlled the race, because I had to drive really hard throughout, but towards the end I think Nicola must have used his tyres and also he had his mirrors full of Rickard. I think that gave me a little bit of a chance to pull away which was, I must say, very, very pleasing.
Q:
Though you’d had a couple of podiums this season before Pau, it was still obviously your first victory of 2008 and first since Macau last year. That must have been very satisfying?
AP:
It’s always nice to get that under your belt, because you feel then that at least you’ve got a win. Because this championship is so tough and the rules are changing all the time, you can easily go through a season without a win and still potentially win the title. Nobody likes to win championships without winning races, so I think it’s nice to get that one out of the way and it allows me to concentrate on other things. I’m more concerned about trying to improve the package that we have at the moment, though, because Gabriele Tarquini – who’s leading the championship right now, twelve points ahead of us – out-scored us over the Pau weekend whilst carrying more weight. That’s a worry.
Q:
Talking about the weight issue, one of the recent changes to the WTCC means the BMWs are now carrying a bit less weight than they did before, and also the SEATs have had their engine speed limited. Have those changes made it more of a level playing field than it was previously?
AP:
I think SEAT hasn’t had its engine limited; I think that limit of 4,050rpm was actually above the limit of the car anyway, so I don’t think the engine rev limiter has made any difference at all to SEAT. As far as the weight goes, it is a help but it’s not enough. I think the
FIA aren’t going to be able to control this problem with weight alone; it will require some serious engine restrictions to bring the diesel into line with all the other cars on the grid.
