Q:
You’ve now got Brno in the Czech Republic coming up next on the calendar. It wasn’t a great weekend for you last year results-wise; do you feel you’ve got some scores to settle this time around?
AP:
Well, it was actually a fantastic weekend [in terms of performance], and I left the circuit feeling really positive. I know I didn’t finish race one, but that wasn’t my fault. I’d qualified on the front row with the heaviest car, literally just off pole position. I had the speed to win that weekend, and I think what happened in the race made my championship a lot harder than it needed to have been, because I then spent the second half of the season just trying to close the gap. I was taken out of race one, and then came back from the last on the grid to take a couple of points in race two, but potentially it could have been a 15 or 16-point weekend, and I went into Macau with only one point to spare.
Q:
So heading back to Brno now, you’re the first driver to have broken the SEAT stranglehold at the top of the title standings, sitting in fourth position. Is it game on again, do you feel?
AP:
Not at the moment, no. I think SEAT is going to come into its own in Brno with the hills and its diesel engine. Unless something changes, I don’t see anything more than a yellow wash to be honest. I’m not being negative; I’m just being realistic about it.
BMW are doing everything possible to bring the package into a competitive situation, but I think if we become competitive the
FIA will just restrict us anyway. We’ve just got to keep scoring points at the moment and bagging as many of them as we can, hoping that when the rules re-align themselves a bit more that we’ll be able to really be competitive for the second half of the season.
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