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  • 2018 Formula 1 Bahrain Grand Prix: Post Race Press Conference

    2018 Formula 1 Bahrain Grand Prix: Post Race Press Conference

    DRIVERS

    1 – Sebastian VETTEL (Ferrari)

    2 – Valtteri BOTTAS (Mercedes)

    3 – Lewis HAMILTON (Mercedes)

     

    PODIUM INTERVIEWS

    (Conducted by David Coulthard)

     

    Sebastian, you had to work for that one!

    Sebastian VETTEL: Yeah, I think I came on the race with about 10 laps to go, “I have everything under control”. I don’t know if they broadcast that. That was a lie; there was nothing under control. When they told me the pace of Valtteri at that time, there was no way I could do that. I was making the maths inside the car with 10 laps togo, at that pace, he’s going to catch me! I tried to keep it as clean as possible. Both Mercedes at the end of their stints were very strong, already in the first one. I think by going onto the prime… obviously they saw what we did, but going onto to the medium tyre, I thought that’s check mate, because we had to come in again. That was the original plan, but then we diverted obviously, and the tyres, I tried to make them last, nursed them as much as I can, and it worked. But just! There wasn’t much… I guess at the end of the straight for Valtteri, he had a bit of a sniff, but fortunately he ran out of laps, so very happy.

     

    Well, it’s great – your 49th victory from your 200th start. I’ll just bring Valtteri in here: so give us the mind set inside the car? You’re hunting him down, so you’ve got the gap within DRS, what were you saying in your mind as you got up close to the Ferrari gearbox?

    Valtteri BOTTAS: I was seeing red.

     

    I get that! There was a lot of red. You just ran out of laps there, but the emotion in the cockpit?

    VB: Yeah, you know, I knew that because we were on the harder compound that he would struggle in the end, and he started to struggle, so I was just trying to get every corner perfect, every lap perfect, trying to catch him, but it was just not quite enough. But you are focusing on making everything perfect.

     

    So, Seb, you feel you had him completely under control, you were making a race of it?

    SV: Yeah, well, as I said, obviously coming out I knew we would have quite a gap because I pitted one or two laps sooner but then I wasn’t sure what they were on about. As I said, they were on the harder compound, meaning there is no stop necessary for them and it turned it out to be a greater strategy – it put us under a lot of stress and pressure. I think we had nothing to lose at that point, trying to stay out, trying to win, or I guess finish third. It worked – just. So, really pleased. If you manage to get the win under these conditions it tastes even better, so really happy.

     

    Quick message to Seb for next time. Are you going to get him? You can look him in the eye, you don’t need to look at his gearbox.

    VB: Well, you know, being second with such a close margin and having good pace at the end is extremely disappointing, so for sure I will try to get them next time.

     

    OK, well done. Lewis, congratulations on the podium, difficult weekend. We heard you frustrated in the car, there were some radio communication issues. We could hear what you were saying, but somehow your team couldn’t. Talk us through that. You should be happy with a third place, but you seem a bit disappointed?

    Lewis HAMILTON: No not at all, I’m happy! Firstly, congratulations to Sebastian and Valtteri did an exceptional job this weekend. I’m really happy to have… I started ninth, so third is not bad at all. It’s damage limitation. I think there were some frustrating points during the race where they couldn’t hear me, so I had to choose particular points during which I could speak to them.  So communication was really difficult. When you’re trying to catch Sebastian who was 25 seconds ahead, to know exactly what you need to do in order to not kill your tyres but make it so that you can catch him at the end, it’s difficult and if you’re not getting that feedback, it makes it kind of frustrating.

     

    Quick message to your fans here?

    LH: Big thank you to ebveryone in Bahrain, all the British flags here, thank you for coming out and supporting us, I appreciate it.

     

    Seb, coming back to you, leading the championship. I think we have to go back to something like 1982 since the guy that won the first two races of the season didn’t win the championship. You’re all about stats…

    SV: Well, they had less races in 1982, so probably… I don’t believe in all those things. Sometimes they work for you, sometimes against you. It doesn’t matter – we won and it’s a great feeling tonight. Bit sad, because I think in the pit stop with Kimi one of our mechanics got injured, so send him the best regards, I’m sure the guys are looking after him. Overall, a mixed day, knowing that, then one car retiring, but fortunately we managed to stay ahead of those two.

     

    PRESS CONFERENCE – QUESTIONS FROM THE FLOOR

     

    Q: (Louis Dekker – NOS) Lewis, I believe, if my ears are correct, you used the word ‘dickhead’ after the race concerning Max Verstappen and the overtake and the contact. Is that correct? And more importantly, is there an opinion you have on the contact you had with Max in the beginning stages of the race? Who was wrong, or was it just a racing incident?

    SV: Can I answer that question?

    Yes.

    SV: I think it’s not fair… I mean, I don’t know what Lewis did. We’ve all been in that situation, we fight someone, we go sometimes wheel-to-wheel, it’s close and you have a lot of adrenalin going, do you think comparing to football, if you have a microphone on a football player’s mouth, that everything he says is something nice and is a nice message when the guy tackles him and maybe sometimes he fouls him or not. So I don’t think it’s justified to give us these kind of shit questions and making up a story out of nothing, if we are just racing and we are full of adrenalin and sometime we say these things. I mean if I hit you in your face, you’re not going to say “oh, Sebastian, that wasn’t nice”. It’s a human reaction. Sometimes I feel it’s all a bit blown up and artificial if we have these questions, trying to make a story out of nothing. So, it’s not personal, don’t take it personal. So I think we should cut it right there, so now if Lewis can answer.

     

    I’ll just apologise for any colourful language in Sebastian’s answer there. Now over to you, Lewis.

    LH: Honestly, I don’t really remember it. I think maybe it was when we were talking afterwards? Ultimately, I had a coming together with Max and it was an unnecessary collision. There needs to be a certain respect between drivers and ultimately… maybe I need to go and watch the manoeuvre again, but it didn’t feel like a respectful manoeuvre, but ultimately it was a silly manoeuvre for himself, because he didn’t finish the race. And obviously he’s tending to make quite a few mistakes recently, so it was just unnecessary for him to do that. I can’t really remember at what stage of the race it was or why we were even in that position, but yeah, I don’t really care to be honest.

     

    Q: (Heikki Kulta – Turun Sanomat) Valtteri, after Australia, does this result put your championship fight in the balance or would you have needed that victory?

    VB: It’s difficult to say about the balance in terms of championship, title fight because it’s only race two out of 21 so obviously, I got some points today but Sebastian, who’s leading the Championship definitely got more points. It’s early days – but anyway a lot better than two weeks ago. And even today, the race pace we had was actually slightly better than we expected coming into today. So, that was positive. I think this weekend has really opened up our eyes in terms of how much we still have work to do with the car in certain conditions. It’s really fast – but like yesterday we could spot some weaknesses of the car and even today. It’s been an important weekend. We need to make sure we keep improving those negatives we have to Ferrari.

     

    Q: (Scott Mitchell – Autosport) A question for Sebastian. Do you think that the performance for this weekend is… how much of it is down to improvements that you’ve made with Ferrari and how much is it maybe not quite being at the same level as in Australia.

    SV: It’s a difficult one. I can’t speak for them but I think it’s always a combination of things. You try to put so many things together and sometimes you succeed more than other times. I think probably the circuit came our way. I think mostly the fact I had a better feel with the car, we worked on the setup helped us to extract more. It was more consistent on one lap but also in the race. So, I felt just healthier and more in control. So, as I said, how much they struggled, I don’t know. I think they looked pretty handy at the end of the stints, at least, and in qualifying the gap wasn’t massive. So, I think overall it’s been close but obviously, it’s good to be just ahead.

     

    Q: (Arrackal Alexander – Gulf Auto Zone) Congratulations on the win. My first question to Vettel is: what have you to say about the car you won with and going into Shanghai are you confident with this car. The second question is to Bottas, it is you had a problem coming in where you almost caught up with him and there was a lot of smoke coming out through the front. What exactly was that? And did it have a problem. Did it have anything to do with being in second. And third one to Lewis Hamilton. Coming in from ninth and going all the way up to third congratulations – but what happened to the car and what one gathers from your conference earlier there was some problem with communication. What did that have to do with just coming in third, and what are your plans going into Shanghai?

    SV: You start, otherwise we won’t remember.

    LH: That was a long question. Communication, it was just the helmet radio so they could hear wind but they couldn’t hear my voice. Obviously, there’s turbulence in the car, that’s what they could hear rather than my voice. So, that’s an area we need to improve – but it’s not always the case. Just must have been something busted this weekend. Yeah, luckily we go from here with good points still and a good finish. I’m really, as I said, happy with third but going into Shanghai, it’s a good track for me in general. So, I’m hoping to turn the tables a little bit that weekend – but it’s going to be obviously hard. The Ferrari’s have shown incredible pace the last couple of races, so yeah…

     

    Seb, talking about going to Shanghai…

    SV: Yeah, I mean, as I’ve touched on many times this weekend, I had more confidence in the car, a better feel. I don’t know how to explain the best way but if you have more confidence and the car’s responding to your input then ultimately you go faster because you know what to expect and you can anticipate and overall you are happier. I think that’s the main step that we did for this weekend, working for the setup. Now Shanghai’s a completely different course, with different conditions. Usually it’s quite a bit cooler there. So, we’ll see when we get there – but yeah, it’s a tricky one to get everything right. The setup again will be crucial for us. It seems a bit more difficult to get into the window but if we do like this weekend, and we find the sweet spot, then I’m pretty confident that we can do well there as well.

     

    Valtteri?

    VB: When you’re closing up, the car ahead, it was obviously going to be very close with Sebastian in the end. I was trying everything I could to get to the distance to try and overtake. And in the braking zones, when you get close you lose some downforce because of the turbulent air. It affects mainly the front end, so that’s why it’s a little easier to lock the front wheels under braking. So, that’s the smoke. But didn’t really go wide in any corners, but it’s just when you’re pushing the limits, that can happen.

    Q: (Luis Vasconcelos – Formula Press) Valtteri, your second stint was not very linear. Initially you gained 3.5s in the first ten laps but then on the next ten laps you lost four seconds and only by lap 44 you really started catching up. Were you trying to save tyres or you only reacted when it was clear he was not going to stop again?

    VB: Initially I was trying to get a feel of the medium tyre which felt very good but suddenly it started to drop a little bit and knowing that I had to finish the race, at that middle part of the stint, I decided to take it a tiny bit easier, to kind of save for the end, but also I lost a lot of time with the backmarkers, I think more than Sebastian. I think for this track, the rule of blue flags seems like you need to get too close to get the blue flag switched on because you already lose a lot of time when you try to get there but I guess that’s the same for everyone. But yeah, in the end, tried to get everything out of the tyres and pretty much two laps to go I started to struggle with the tyres so yeah, long stint.

     

    Q: (Livio Oricchio – GloboEsporte.com) Sebastian, at one moment in the race your lap times were very high, more than seven seconds slower than yesterday. Were you controlling the pace, knowing that you should be racing to the end and knowing also that both Mercedes drivers were on mediums and you were on soft?

    SV: Yes, funny you mentioned that. I was thinking the same thing, I was thinking somewhere mid-race that the lap times we were doing, if only now I could have one lap like qualifying the gap would be massive to Valtteri and I could have a breather, I could breathe again. But yeah, obviously when we’re racing we are on the same set of tyres, they’re not getting better. We were running down the fuel so you should get faster but obviously sliding more and more. You’re not able to push as hard as in qualifying, I think that’s where the gap is coming from plus I think everybody had to manage the race a little bit. We had a virtual safety car for two laps, two and a half, three laps, something like this, so you save a bit of fuel but we still had to do some fuel saving, so it slows you down again a little bit and you have to manage (it). Obviously our plan was a bit different when we started, I lost a little bit at the end of the first stint, Valtteri was closing in, and then, I think, I knew we didn’t have the freedom any more to react so that’s the advantage if you are behind, you can wait and obviously Valtteri did that and they decided to go on a different strategy, trying to win the race so you can’t blame them. But for us, the plan initially was a bit different but then our only chance really, as the tyres were holding on quite well, was to stay out and it just worked. I think we had nothing to lose. Obviously if we pitted again with five laps to go we finish third but equally I felt if we pitted 15 or 20 laps to go, it would be difficult to make progress because I guess the medium tyres were more consistent, then it would have been much harder to get past Lewis, initially, who was ahead, if we had a normal stop and then chase down Valtteri. So that’s what we did and obviously we responded well after it looked like they put us in checkmate. I’m obviously extremely happy that we could still come out on top.

     

    Q: (Sushma Athilat – Radio Mirchi) I just wanted to congratulate you. Do you know Bahrain really looks forward to Formula One every twelve months. I’m sure every country is especially excited to receive you all but do you have a message for the people of Bahrain?

    SV: Well, obviously now you’ve had the Grand Prix for many years and I think especially switching to a night race in 2014 I think it just looks cool. You have the sparks coming out, it’s great. Obviously if you’re on the podium or on the in-lap or the parade lap, after the chequered flag you have the fireworks. Obviously I was lucky the last two years to come in first. It’s a great race, people are enjoying… just outside the paddock, I think there’s quite a good vibe. There’s the go-kart track busy. Usually it’s a fun weekend and it’s great to see that there’s more people coming. I think it wouldn’t hurt if there were still more people, especially from outside, but for sure all the Bahraini people… you have the posters everywhere hanging and the people are really proud and happy to have the Grand Prix, so it’s nice to be part of that.

    VB: Yeah, I was lucky this weekend to meet some local fans who had got access to the paddock as guests of our team, just by being very supportive. Our team picked up a few of them and it was really nice to meet and speak a little bit about the local culture but for me it’s always been a good place to come for racing and even some years for testing so always enjoy it. The sun is shining, people are friendly. For me the track has been good in the past so it’s a bonus as well.

    LH: I think they’ve pretty much covered it. I said something on the podium. I love it here and the fans are amazing.

     

    Q: (Mario Salvini – La Gazzetta dello Sport) Sebastian, I guess you know perfectly well when the last time a Ferrari driver won the first two events in a season and what happened at the end of that year…

    SV: No. Last year we went to Australia, China and then here, right? Well, I guess it was Michael then. Fernando, he won the first race, I remember, in 2010. That’s so long ago. Well, look, we have a very very long season ahead of us. It’s clear that we need to improve, we have to improve our car, our package. I guess everybody’s trying to do the same so the competition is very high. Needless to say that Valtteri and Lewis are pushing very hard. Obviously, Kimi, alongside, is pushing incredibly hard. The two Red Bull guys with Max and Daniel are pushing hard. Then there’s a bit more of a gap but I think those three teams and six drivers are very very close to each other. Even if now, for us, the first two races went amazingly, for others maybe not so much, there’s still a long long way and a long season, a lot of races, a lot of things that can happen so it’s a bit pointless to try and look forward as I said. It will be important to improve and be quick everywhere you go. That helps. The quicker you are, the quicker your package is, the more you are one unit with your car, the happier you feel, the more you’re able to extract when it really matters.

     

    Q: (Andrew Benson – BBC Sport) Seb, when did you decide that you had to switch to a one stop. Were you effectively forced into it and at what point did you make the call? And also, where would you rate that win among your many?

    SV: Well, fortunately I have a lot to chose from. I’m not sure I remember all of them now but certainly it felt great. If you compare Australia and here it’s a different race, needless to say. Obviously the way Australia happened… it was quite intense the last stint in Australia with Lewis pushing from behind but I was a bit more comfortable there because I knew the track is more difficult to overtake (on) whereas here, I knew that if Valtteri gets close with the DRS he can really be a threat. My tyres were done, ten laps to go I think I went on the radio and said I have everything under control – I had nothing under control. I was hoping that they tell Valtteri that Sebastian’s controlling the pace and tell him to turn the engine so that I can relax a bit but obviously that wasn’t the case, he wasn’t told. I’m sure if I was on the radio saying that my tyres were done, then they would have told him ‘come on now, keep pushing.’ I think he was pushing, nevertheless, but yeah, overall obviously a great way to win. I think I mentioned before the sad part is that obviously one of our mechanics got injured. I will go straight away to find out what’s going on and hopefully he’s in good hands and in good care and makes a speedy recovery. If that happens, you celebrate as a team but at the same time you look after each other. Hopefully it’s not too bad. As I said, hopefully he’s in good hands and gets the best care he can right now and then has not too long of a break because I know the guy and he loves racing so let’s see.

    Ah, the strategy, sorry, I forgot. They have different plans and when they told me the plan I first had to think what was that again, when we talked about it. It wasn’t the first or second option. I had to think a little bit but then I got it and I looked up on the tower and I saw Gasly was in P4 so I thought the gap would be quite big and we have nothing to lose and go for the one stop and try to make the tyres last but it wasn’t our intended strategy at first. When did they tell me? I don’t know, probably something like twenty-something laps to go. With 15 laps to go I was still very comfortable and then there was a big step around ten laps to go where, the tyre just dropped off and the last five laps were really difficult.

  • 2018 Bahrain GP: Post Qualifying Press Conference

    2018 Bahrain GP: Post Qualifying Press Conference

    DRIVERS

    1 – Sebastian VETTEL (Ferrari)

    2 – Kimi RÄIKKÖNEN (Ferrari)

    3 – Valtteri BOTTAS (Mercedes)

     

    TRACK INTERVIEWS

    (conducted by Johnny Herbert)

    Q: Let’s talk to this man, who is on pole position. Nice smiley face. You must be a happy boy?

    Sebastian VETTEL: Yeah, let me breathe! It was quite intense. First run in Q3 I was very happy and then tossed it away in the last corner. No, really happy that I got the second run and I got it clean and I knew in the last corner I just knew I had to stay away from that kerb. Then obviously you’re looking around trying to see where the others are. Very happy. The car was excellent all weekend so far, so looking forward to tomorrow.

     

    Q: We’ve go to talk about the car, because these guys, your mechanics, have done a brilliant job for you. But when we look at her, she just seemed to do everything you needed to do day and that seemed to be the comfort factor that you had?

    SV: Yeah, you know best. If the car is responding to what you want it to do it’s a pleasure. Otherwise it’s a fight. Australia was more of a fight. I think we worked on the balance. I think we looked into it a lot and I think we improved it as well yesterday and today – even though it’s not easy because we do the practice session when the sun is up and qualifying and the race when the sun is down. But yeah, the car is responding, so very pleased.

     

    Q: Good to see that smile on your face. And Kimi… that was a battle and a half. How are you feeling now? A little bit of disappointment I guess? But that was a good performance for you this weekend?

    Kimi RÄIKKÖNEN: For sure, not ideal. Far from ideal in the last run, with the traffic, but what can you do?

     

    Q: Yeah, what can you do? But again, everything seems to have started strong for you this season. It was unfortunate for you in Australia but coming here you look more at home than I think we have seen you for a long time. There are millions of people around the world who support you big time and this is maybe the start of something coming good for you.

    KR: Well, we’ll see. It’s one Saturday. Tomorrow is the main thing and tomorrow is the time when we get the points or we don’t get the points, so obviously see what we can do then.

     

    Q: Valtteri, happy with that performance today? You beat your team-mate, which is great. I know you had pole position last year, but these two guys in red, they were strong today.

    Valtteri BOTTAS: Yeah, it felt OK, the laps were OK and getting better towards the end. In Q3, when you need to put everything together, we got it more or less. I think these guys with the red car they are just a bit too quick. We can’t be happy with this, so we are looking forward to tomorrow.

     

    Q: But tomorrow is something you can focus on, a totally different scenario, because race pace looks a bit better than qualifying?

    VB: Yeah, I think it’s going to be a close race, even with Red Bull and with Lewis and Max coming from behind we’ll see. It should be interesting.

     

    Q: Well done. Seb, you’re going to be starting right at the front, no one in front of you. You’re going to be feeling pretty good once those lights go out.

    SV: Feeling good now, tomorrow’s a different story. It’s a long, long race and we’ve seen that it’s not easy to make the tyres last so… The car is quick – that usually helps! Let’s see when the lights out, but for now I’m very chuffed and for the team as well. We had some issues this morning but we overcame those, so, yeah, looking forward to tomorrow.

     

    PRESS CONFERENCE

     

    Q: Seb, your 51st career pole position in Formula One. It didn’t look that likely after FP3. Was it as surprising to you, the way the weekend has panned out?

    SV: I think it’s surprising for us to be, after Australia, that competitive. So, obviously, we, I think, have a good base. The car is working; in Australia, I think we struggled with the feel for the car. Here it’s been better, so we improved a little bit, working the car, y’know, the beginning of the season, it’s always difficult because you don’t know yet the car that well. It’s getting better, so obviously today was quite nice and the car came alive. I didn’t have much session this afternoon, so it was a bit tricky to know what to expect but I felt quite good right from the start and knew that I could make progress throughout the session. Q3, that’s when I wanted it to peak, and I think I peaked in the first run, just before the last corner. I wanted a bit too much. So, I knew I had a bit in me and yeah, basically, it was a bit copy/paste the final lap I had, but the last corner I managed to stay away from the kerbs, so yeah, very happy with both laps in the end and happy obviously with the result, with the car, the way the car was handling and responding, so, yeah. Chuffed.

     

    Q: Kimi, coming to you, you’ve looked quick all weekend here, and it looked like you were one of the favourites for pole position today. Where do you think that pole just got away from you today, compared to Seb?

    KR: Somewhere around the lap. Far from ideal but with the traffic on the last run. I thought there is a lot we can improve but obviously, it was such a messy thing in the end, I was passing people and doing this and that, so it’s disappointing because it’s been good most of the weekend. Everything. You always want one more but we’ll see tomorrow.

     

    Q: Valtteri, coming to you. The gap between Mercedes and Ferrari at times looked even bigger this weekend than it is in the final result. Does that give you encouragement for tomorrow’s race?

    VB: Well yeah, of course. First of all, it’s disappointing not to be in the first row. Ferrari was quicker today – but yeah, for sure we made some good progress during the weekend, we tried some things which didn’t work, that’s why the gap was sometimes bigger. So, I think we have the right setup in the car for the race. So, it’s difficult to estimate really, with the race pace. I think it’s still a long race tomorrow so anything can happen. We’ll definitely go for it and hopefully Lewis can also come back to get some good points, and hopefully we can put pressure on these guys.

     

    QUESTIONS FROM THE FLOOR

     

    Q: (Christian Menath – Motorsport-Magazin.com) Seb, do have an idea why you feel the car more here: is it the track characteristics, the updates you’ve got on the car, was it set-up that you made changes?

    SV: Well, we mostly tried to work on the set-up, understanding the car so we tried different things obviously. Across the weekend, you don’t have that much time so in Australia, the first race in Australia, it’s a tricky track, it’s improving a lot throughout the weekend, it’s very bumpy so it’s difficult to change too much in drawing conclusions. I think after the weekend, after the race distance, especially when you have so many laps, I think we had a very good understanding and feel and obviously we’ve been talking about it and looking into it and I think overall I’ve been happier this weekend with how the car has been responding, how the front end was responding so yeah, overall, I think you also see it in the results but I think the good news is that we are a lot closer in all the conditions, if you look at all the sessions across with everyone so I think that’s the only difference. For the rest it’s the same car as in Australia.

     

    Q: (Heikki Kulta – Turun Sanomat) Kimi, P2 in qualifying in Australia and now again.  How difficult is it to start against your teammate compared to Lewis in Australia?

    KR: I don’t think it’s any different, it’s another car. We’re never next to each other at the start because it’s staggered but it’s no different, we’re basically in the same position, just a different way round with the start. Makes no difference.

     

    Q: (Livio Oricchio – GloboEsporte.com) Valtteri, in Australia Mercedes was very fast and here on a more normal circuit we expected you to be even more fast but we saw exactly the opposite. What is going on with your car? Is it tyre management again like last year?

    VB: I don’t know what’s going on. I agree that we were not having the pace this weekend that we’ve been expecting coming here but we also didn’t have anything new since Melbourne. It’s a very different circuit, very different kind of tarmac, different temperatures, everything so for sure we still need to understand completely why. For sure we are struggling a little bit with some overheating issues with the tyres. Obviously less so in the evening sessions but still, we have work to do. It’s like we’ve been saying all through the beginning of the season that we are not miles away. Today, Ferrari, this weekend so far has been the quicker car so that’s where we are. We were better in Australia, we need to understand why we were not quickest today but for sure we still have tomorrow to see how the pace is.

     

    Q: (Luigi Perna – La Gazzetta dello Sport) Sebastian, this pole position, is it only up to the better balance of the car or do you have a party mode working as well as the Mercedes one this time?

    SV: No, I think we answered that already in Australia. As I said, I was happier with the balance of the car so obviously there’s a lot of factors. It’s how comfortable you are in the car, whether the car’s responding or not to what you like it to do. The track, Valtteri has mentioned, the surface, the temperatures, so there are a lot of things but I think we are very very happy that we build another very strong car and we are able to put it on the front row on our own, beating everybody today, so I think that’s a great result and deserves some credit for the team, the effort that everyone is putting in so I think that’s the best thing about today but the race is tomorrow so even if it’s a good day, the main day is coming tomorrow.

     

    Q: (Scott Mitchell – Autosport) Kimi, you seem a lot more comfortable in the car at the start of this season compared to last year. Do you feel happier in the car and what’s different for you to access that higher level?

    KR: Every car is different, it’s a new car obviously and it’s been OK. Obviously there are things we need to improve and we can improve but it’s reasonably fine. Like I said, it’s a new car, there are certain designs that have been done but it’s either good or not and there’s not one specific thing that is suddenly better for me than other years.

     

    Q: (Arrackal Alexander – Gulf Auto Zone) Looking at the new halo system, how is it functioning with the three of you and what would hold the key for success tomorrow?

    VB: It doesn’t feel so new any more, the halo. I think we’re used to it and I think it’s all good. I actually missed the second question, what was it?

     

    Q: What will be the key tomorrow?

    VB: Be quick. I think here tyre management is going to be really important but consistent things, whoever’s having the less drop-off with the tyres is going to be high in the end.

    SV: Just the first time in the weekend you get in the car it’s still a bit weird but as Valtteri said, you get used to it. I think it would be funny now if we take it off, it would feel a bit naked but yeah, it’s fine. I think the most difficult thing is to get in and out. And for the rest, yeah, nothing to add from Valtteri.

     

    Q: Key to success for you tomorrow? Is it the start against your teammate?

    KR: It’s the whole package, obviously, but I think we should have a good car. Make a good start and go from there.

  • Raikkonen Fastest in Bahrain GP Final Practice

    Raikkonen Fastest in Bahrain GP Final Practice

    Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen picked up where he left off yesterday after setting the fastest time in the final practice session of the Bahrain Grand Prix.

    Raikkonen’s time of 1:29.868 on the super soft tyres was the fastest of the session. Red Bull’s Max Verstappen was 2nd fastest 0.525s off the pace with a 1:30.393. Rounding out the top 3 was Daniel Ricciardo in the second Red Bull with a 1:30.452.

    The session got off to a very slow start after driver waited for quite some time for the track temperatures to drop a bit. The session was relatively uneventful except for Sebastian Vettel who had a problem with a lose right barge board. He was back in the pits immediately and the team got to work on his car. Shortly after he was back out for a few laps and was back in the pits with an engine issue with 15mins before the end of the session. Ferrari are working on the problem but no word as to the cause of the issue.

    Finishing 4th fastest was Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton 0.823s off the pace. Mercedes have been struggling all weekend with grip on the super soft tyre and Hamilton could be seen lighting up his rear tyres on his flying lap. Bottas in the second Mercedes finished the session 6th fastest behind Vettel in 5th.

    The two Renaults seem to be hitting their stride with Nico Hulkenberg finishing 7th fastest ahead of team mate Carlos Sainz.

    Pierre Gasly continues his good run of form this weekend with a 9th fastest finish of the session while Alonso rounded out the top 10.

    With the Mercedes cars struggling for pace, qualifying will be difficult for them to set a good time and with Hamilton’s grid penalty adding to their concerns. But we’ve seen that Hamilton is able to dig deep and find pace and grip and put in a stunning lap where it counts.

    Ferrari look to have the advantage, but with cooling track temps it will get very close between the top 3 teams come qualifying.

     

  • Gearbox Change Drops Hamilton down 5-Grid Places

    Gearbox Change Drops Hamilton down 5-Grid Places

    Lewis Hamilton has been handed a 5-place grid drop for the Bahrain Grand Prix after his team elected to change his gearbox.

    Mercedes say that a hydraulic leak was the cause of the change. They had attempted to repair the leak ahead of this weekend but could not get the repair done in time and had no choice to take a new gearbox.

    Even if Hamilton qualifies on pole, he will start the race from P6 on the grid. This will add a little more difficulty to his afternoon since the race pace of Ferrari and Red Bull are so similar.

    No I’m definitely not where I [need to be],” Hamilton said.

    “I mean, we’ve got things to improve on.

    “What it’s just shown is that it’s incredibly close between the three teams, like really close. I think it will be a tough weekend.”

     

     

    Photo credit: Mercedes AMG Petronas Formula One Team

  • 2018 Bahrain GP: Friday Practice Round Up

    2018 Bahrain GP: Friday Practice Round Up

    Free Practice for the Bahrain Grand Prix on Friday yielded some mixed results between the two sessions with Ferrari ultimately getting the edge and looking the stronger team at the end of the day.

    Free Practice 1

    Daniel Ricciardo was the man on top of the time sheets at the end of FP1 with a session best time of 1:31.060. Valtteri Bottas in the Mercedes was 0.304s down in P2 with Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen a further 0.398s off the pace.

    Going into the session it looked like it would be a Mercedes-Ferrari battle, but Daniel Ricciardo getting into the mix shows that Red Bull are knocking on the door.

    The session, which takes place during the day while qualifying and the race is in the evening, was not representative of the performance of the teams, which meant that teams were not in a hurry to get out until much later in the session.

    While Ricciardo set the fastest time of the session, his team mate Max Verstappen had electrical issues after two laps. The Dutchman managed to get the car to the edge of the pit lane and pushed it back into the pits with the help of the marshals.

    The mid-field battle looked extremely close with Romain Grosjean in the Haas leading the pack in 7th ahead of Pierre Gasly in the upgraded Toro Rosso in 8th. Carlos Sainz in the Renault.

    Spins from Williams Lance Stroll and Sauber’s Charles Leclerc capped off uneventful sessions for the pair.

     

     

    Free Practice 2

    Ferrari emerged from the second free practice session in the evening as the strongest running team with Kimi Raikkonen topping the time sheets narrowly edging Ferrari team mate Sebastian Vettel by 0.011s. Bottas in the Mercedes was 0.563 off the pace. The fastest times for the top three was set on the red banded super soft tyre, a tyre that the Mercedes cars did not seem comfortable on while the Ferrari’s on the other hand seemed solid.

    Lewis Hamilton finished 4th fastest 0.655s off Raikkonen’s pace ahead of Max Verstappen and Daniel Ricciardo in 5th and 6th respectively.

    Nico Hulkenberg who complained about the balance of his Renault ended his session 7th fastest ahead of the upgraded Toro Rosso of Pierre Gasly.

    Both McLaren’s finished in the top 10 with Fernando Alonso finishing 9th ahead of team mate Stoffel Vandoorne.

    The long run pace between Ferrari, Mercedes and Red Bull looks very closely matched. It looks like strategy could be the only differentiator come race day for victory – with a bit of luck thrown in for good measure.

    Just 15mins before the end of the session, Raikkonen had to pull over after one of his wheels was not fastened properly. The team was fined €5000 for their transgression.

    The Haas boys finished a little lower down the order while the Force India pair ended up higher up the order.

    The teams go into Saturday’s final practice session very closely matched with Ferrari slightly edging ahead.

     

     

     

    Photo by courtesy Pirelli

  • 2018 Formula 1 Bahrain Grand Prix: Friday Press Conference

    2018 Formula 1 Bahrain Grand Prix: Friday Press Conference

    TEAM REPRESENTATIVES – Claire WILLIAMS (Williams), Zak BROWN (McLaren), Guenther STEINER (Haas)

    PRESS CONFERENCE

    Guenther, we’ll start with you: that looked like an encouraging first session, with Romain up in sixth place. Does that help you move ahead from the disappointment of Australia and start to put it behind you?

    Guenther STEINER: Yeah, absolutely, it will help. It keeps the morale up with the guys, from the disappointment of Australia. But then again, FP1 doesn’t mean a lot. But it’s better to be there than to be last. It helps the guys to keep going and I hope we keep going in FP2, FP3 and Qualifying. And then hopefully in the race we have a flawless race.

     

    And how did you pick up the guys after Australia?

    GS: I think we just regrouped and said ‘these things can happen; they shouldn’t happen, we all know that’. You don’t have to beat anybody up; they all feel bad about it. Nobody does this intentionally. It was a series of things that went wrong and it just happened in one race and when we were in a good position. But you always have to take out the positives. We learn, it seems like we have a good car, we just have to keep pushing and we will be fine the rest of the year.

     

    Thank you. Claire, Melbourne was quite a difficult weekend for Williams, certainly in the race. Was that race a fair reflection of where the team stands in the pecking order at the moment?

    Claire WILLIAMS: Yeah, you’re right – it wasn’t our finest hour in Melbourne. I think we probably came into the season following testing knowing that we wanted to be. I think we would have hoped that we made some greater inroads into the performance delta to the frontrunners, however that didn’t transpire in Melbourne. But I’m not necessarily convinced that Melbourne was particularly representative, I hope it wasn’t. We know that there are three key areas of weakness that we need to focus on, which we’re doing now. We certainly believe we have more performance to extract from the car and that’s what the team are working on at the moment.

     

    How do you move forward from here to improve the car in those areas?

    CW: As I said, we know the three key areas of weakness and we just need to focus on those. The team needs to a good job trackside to make sure that our race ops are where they need to be. The drivers need to ensure that they’re doing what they needs to do from the start of the weekend. And then we need to make sure that we’re improving the performance of the car race to race. Probably it’s the car that’s our greatest weakness at the moment, so everybody at Grove is galvanised to make sure that we bring the upgrades that we need to bring and that we keep working on it. It’s just about keeping our heads down and not getting too stressed out but the first result in Melbourne. I think that’s really important – this is a long season and we need to look forward rather than back.

     

    Thank you. Zak, coming to you, it’s a home race of sorts for McLaren and you had a strong result on the first race weekend, but was the pace where you expected it to be at the start of the season?

    Zak BROWN: Our pace was there or thereabouts. It was a good race for us. We wanted to get both cars home, reliably and in the points. It was a good weekend. The drivers did an exceptional job, the pit stops were good, we’re in the rebuilding process, it’s a long season, but that was a long season for us.

     

    Yesterday, Fernando Alonso said that the next two months are crucial for McLaren. Is that a sentiment that you share?

    ZB: I think the next two months are crucial for every Formula 1 team, with the pace of development. No one is sitting still. This race is important, the following race is important, every race is important, but we need to build on Australia, find some more speed, make sure we continue with the reliable and good team work, and I think we’ll have a good season.

     

    QUESTIONS FROM THE FLOOR

     

    Q: (Kate Walker– New York Times) This week we saw the results of the gender pay gap figures published – I know Guenther your team was exempt – but what sort of efforts are you guys making to rectify any imbalances in pay in your workforce and to what extent are the existing imbalances down to people of different gender being in different roles, rather than any deliberate effort to underpay women?

    CW: I can get on my soapbox now! Gender equality at Williams, and I’m talking on behalf of our team, is obviously an issue that we have been looking at and addressing for a number of years now. It’s hugely important as part of a wider societal conversation that we’re having and it’s really important that we tackle and we address these issues. I do think the report that came out this week is misleading. I think the criteria by which we have to report has been particularly misleading. You look at the tables of teams that have had to report and Williams is pretty far down the bottom, but they are looking at the mean and the median. And actually the most important thing when you’re looking at gender pay is that women are paid the same amount as their male counterparts for doing the same role. That’s the most important thing. At Williams we tackled that issue a while ago, probably 12-18 months ago. We know, and I can sit here with total transparency, saying all women at Williams are paid for doing the identical roles that men are paid. I think that’s the most important issue that we have to address. I think that these reports that have come out this week can be extremely misleading, because they are comparing situations where actually there are far fewer women in our roles in our teams, because this is a very male-dominated sport and always has been. However, we’ve done a huge amount of work to tackle that over the past 12 months and we continue to do so. I think at Williams we probably do more work than most of the teams in the paddock, and I’m really proud to say that, either through the initiatives we’ve set up over the past two years to address the situation, or through the work we do with external parties such as F1 in Schools and Dare to be Different. And we will keep plugging this conversation and keep doing this work to ensure that we have more females coming into our team and into motorsport as a whole. It’s so important when we’re looking at a shortage of engineers coming up. We have to be talking to all students, male and female, in secondary and tertiary education if we’re to make sure that at the end of the day this sport survives. But it is also really important to say that we recruit on merit. Sport has to be done on a meritocracy, it’s not just a box-ticking exercise for us to make surer that we have more women in. It’s to make sure that we have quality people coming into our racing teams to work.

    ZB: I echo Claire’s comments, I think she laid that out very well. What I would say is that it is a very important issue for McLaren. It’s something that we speak about frequently. It’s something that we are doing something about, so we recognise its importance and there is definitely room for improvement.

    GS: After Claire, what she said, I don’t know what to say! It was so good. Even if we are exempt, we are equal, it’s the job position, we don’t look at gender. It’s very transparent, we are very new, so we never had any history there. When we started it needed to be equal anyway. That is the position and that is the pay. It doesn’t matter whoever it is that is what gets paid. So we are very fair on that one. Even if we don’t have to report, we have no issues with that and we just keep it fair.

     

    Q: (Dan Knutson – Auto Action and Speed Sport) Liberty presented its broad outline for the future. It’s going to require co-operation from the teams. You’ve all observed Formula 1 for a long time and you know that teams rarely agree unanimously on everything. What’s different now than it has been in the past 30 or 40 years?

    ZB: I can’t really speak to the last 30 or 40 years because I haven’t been around that long… but I have watched it. Yeah, I look like it! Thanks! I think we all recognise that the sport starts with the fan and that’s what Liberty are focused on – putting on a better for the fan. And if the fan wins, we all win. The sponsors win, the m4edia wins, television ratings win. I think we all recognise that the sport is not where it needs to be today so it’s in our collective interest to improve the show. That means we’re all going to have make varying degrees of compromises but I think we’ll ultimate get there at the end and I’m excited about the future of Formula 1.

    CW: I was extremely positive about today’s meeting, I have to say. I think we’ve all hoped for change under our new management and I think today they presented change. I think for a team like ours, based on what they presented, it was an extremely good day for us. I came back thinking let’s crack open some champagne, because from our perspective if we can get these new regulations through, and if Liberty/FOM do everything they say they are going to do, that they presented this morning, then from our perspective I know that Williams’ future is safe. That’s not to say that we were on the brink, or anywhere close, but with today’s sport and the way it is structured and with the financial disparity between teams then the likelihood of Williams’ survival into the medium and long-term was looking pretty bleak. Everything they presented from revenue redistribution to cost caps is absolutely everything that we want to see from 2021 and beyond, so I’m personally delighted with the proposals that they laid down. I know that in the past you can have these conversations and they come out and not necessarily anything is ever done about it, but I’m not sure these discussions are negotiable. That’s not the message I got anyway.

    GS: I think I echo what Claire and Zak said. We are looking all positive after our meeting. But to answer Dan’s question, there’s a different owner of the sport in place so they will do things differently. We knew what was before, there was always the same tactics. With the new owner that is what you have got the chance to make it happen different this time. That’s my opinion about it, to answer Dan’s question straight. I think it was good today. The presentation went well. For sure, everybody goes away and comes back with questions but I think as Claire and Zak said we are at the point where we need to change something to attract people, to attract new fans to do what we need to do to make the sport the leading sport in the world.

     

    Q: (Jerome Pugmire – Associated Press) Just to follow up on that, is there anything – for all three of you – that you had any reservations about regarding the proposals? Any particular point?

    ZB: I think we’re going to avoid getting into specifics of what was discussed this morning. That was what was agreed amongst the teams, Chase and Ross. But, as Claire and Guenther have said, I would say overall the impression is very positive and I think the direction they’re taking is the right direction. There’s obviously a lot of details, questions – but we’ll do that behind closed doors.

     

    Guenther, anything to add?

    GS: No. Nice try to get more information. But no, nothing more to add. The detailed discussions are behind closed doors, we all agreed on that one, and so we should keep it like in any other business and hopefully we bring back a better sport that is better for all of us.

     

    Claire, you’re very happy but I assume you’re going the say the same?

    CW: Yeah, the same. Thank you.

     

    Q: (Dieter Rencken – Racing Lines, Racefans.net) Sorry to continue along the same sort of line but referring to this morning’s meeting, is it not… the presentation was more a Liberty wishlist rather than proposals for the future, given the fact that they aren’t actually the regulatory body. So, do you actually see this as a blueprint for the future or a discussion point?

    CW: I believe it was a proposal rather than a wishlist. It was presented as such and I think that everyone felt it was a blueprint for the future. There are obviously elements in that proposal are under FOM’s control and others which fall under the FIA’s control – but I believe that FOM and FIA are working together and, as I’ve always said, if we’re going to protect the future of this sport then we need to work collaboratively. All three stakeholders.

     

    Zak, did you see it like that?

    ZB: Yep. I was in the same meeting.

     

    Guenther?

    GS: Yes – but there is something between a blueprint and a wishlist, which is called a proposal. That’s what it was. It’s not a blueprint but it’s not ‘oh, let’s try to do this’. It’s something in between but it’s a good starting point. A very good one, actually.

     

    Q: (Jonathan McEvoy – Daily Mail) To Zak. As you’re chairman of McLaren and non-executive director at Motorsport Network, do you think it’s right that one of your drivers advertises a link to the magazine and the website.

    ZB: Yeah, it was a free offering. I think some other drivers are going to be doing it. So yeah, it’s a free opportunity for consumers and hopefully more drivers will help share accordingly.

     

    Q: (Scott Mitchell – Autosport) Just a quick one back on the topic of the meeting this morning. One of the things that was pointed out was a reiteration of the need for a cost cap. So, how much do you think is a sensible target for that and how to you think it would be employed?

    ZB: I think that falls into the realm of items that we’re not going to discuss. I think there’s a lot of detail of what goes into a cost cap and what doesn’t. I think at the end of the day we’re trying to get the sporting field levelled so wherever we land on cost caps should be based around what makes a race car fast on the track – not necessarily some of the other items that go around a Formula One programme: marketing, things of that nature. What you see in the paddock – I think that’s quite special and unique to Formula One.

     

    Guenther, do you have a figure in mind that you think would be good?

    GS: No. I think as Zak said, it’s behind closed doors and we have to go back to that one because we agreed on it. It will come out when the deal is done. Or maybe it never will – but it needs to be reasonable that we can put a good show on, the technology still to showcase it, and what we put in and what we take out, we have to still obviously decide on it but again it will be done behind closed doors.

     

    And Claire, if I could ask, if a figure was given, was it one that would actually affect many of the teams at the moment, or was it quite a high ceiling?

    CW: I don’t know whether to say it was behind closed doors or not – because that’s what everyone else keeps saying. I think it’s a balanced figure. I think obviously whenever you talk about cost caps there are going to be winners and losers, aren’t there? And it’s about compromise at the end of the day.

     

    Q: (Dieter Rencken – Racing Lines, Racefans.net) Question to Guenther – and I won’t ask what you could do with a $150million cost cap – but you’ve obviously played the listed parts regulation to the absolute limit and your performances and commercial performances to date in your last two years prove that it’s actually worked for you. Is this how you intend continuing going forward? To actually continue still getting all the listed parts from your favoured team supplier – or do you intend changing that model? And to the other two, do you believe that this is the way forward for Formula One? To basically be a semi-customer team acquiring as many parts as possible.

    GS: We are doing it until 2020. We were waiting for this proposal and see where we get with the proposal with Liberty Media. And then we decide what we are going to do in the future. We haven’t taken this decision yet, what we are going to do but, for sure, it seems to be working and I don’t see any point to do it different at this moment in time. But it was this morning, the meeting, we have still have not the decision of what will be done with the sport for 2021. How the new contract looks. As soon as we have got that one, we will take a decision in the months after that one, how we continue there.

     

    Zak, is this a future direction that you think Formula One should be exploring?

    ZB: Yeah, I think it… Haas has done an outstanding job. Gene Haas is a very smart businessman, he obviously saw an opportunity to enter the sport and get competitive with less resources than a lot of the other teams out there and I think it does point to future regulations where you do talk about some standardisation of some parts that maybe aren’t visible to the race fan – therefore it doesn’t compromise the integrity of the sport, the customisation. So, I think it is something that they’ve done a very good job on and I think we need to look at some of that, or all of that, some of the basis on which we move forwards as we try to drive cost down.

     

    Claire, your thoughts.

    CW: Yeah, I think Haas have done a fantastic job. They’ve come into the sport and are now a hugely competitive. Obviously we are not very happy about that – but as a model I think certainly it is not one that Williams subscribes to. I think everybody knows our philosophy around being a constructor in our sport. For us, personally – I wouldn’t criticise the way other people want to do it – but we want to retain our constructor position. So it’s not something that I would want our team to subscribe to – to go and buy a whole load of another team’s parts. For me, success for us is us designing, developing and building our race car, ourselves, in-house. And success has to come from us doing it our own way. But, as  a philosophy for other teams, we totally accept that.

    Q: (Arjan Schouten – Ad SportWorld) Zak, Formula Two is also starting this weekend. Last week, Nyck de Vries told on Dutch television that you said to him that he will definitely get a chance with McLaren in Formula One in 2019 when he wins the championship. Two questions: is that true and what does a chance mean?

    ZB: That is not an accurate reflection of the conversation but Nyck’s a very good driver. McLaren will always look to put the two best drivers that it can in the car and no one has any promises from McLaren verbally or contractually as to who is going to be in our car in 2019.

    Q: Indistinct

    ZB: We won’t comment on our contracts but I can tell you that no one has a guarantee to be in our seat for 2019, regardless of any race results.

     

    Q: (Louis Dekker – NOS) Do you think the Liberty plans secure the future of the ten teams?  For instance, will it keep Ferrari on board?

    GS: I cannot speak for Ferrari so I think we need to ask Dr Marchionne that one but I think there is… I’ve no idea. Mr Marchionne wasn’t present and nobody committed this morning, nobody made any comment if they would join or not. I hope they stay on board, obviously, because Ferrari’s a big part of Formula One. I hope everybody stays on board because I think they’ve got ten good teams at the moment and we should try to all work together to keep it going like this.

     

    Q: Claire, you said you came out very happy from that meeting. Do you think every team came out very happy from it?

    CW: I’m sure that some people aren’t going to be very happy. If you hear the intricacies of that meeting then, as I said earlier, there are always going to be winners and losers in this situation and sometimes it’s about compromise if we’re to protect the future health of this sport. Like Guenther says, I can’t comment on Ferrari’s feelings around the proposals that were laid out. All I can comment on is our team and if their proposal is blue-printed then it does protect the survival of Williams and at the end of the day that’s all that matters to me. I want our team to be competing and hopefully winning in this sport for the next two, three, four decades.

    ZB: No, nothing to add, I think we’ll find out soon who’s on board and who’s not. Hopefully everyone will be on board, that’s what’s going to be best for the sport and I believe for all the teams as well.

     

    Q: (Julien Billiotte – AutoHebdo) Claire, you mentioned key areas of your car that need progressing, improving. Can you be more specific? Is it a case of lack of downforce, issues with stability or something else? And regarding the updates, do you think you can have them ready perhaps for Baku or will you have to wait for the start of the European season?

    CW: Yeah, we don’t really like airing our dirty linen in public at Williams. It’s not fair. We know the areas and that’s half the battle, to make sure that you understand the weaker areas of your car. Clearly everyone always wants more downforce, that’s certainly something that we need to work on. But it’s across the whole car. We do believe that there is more performance to find, that we didn’t manage to get it out in Melbourne and so that’s the work moving forward. We do have some significant upgrades coming in the next few races and I’ll be really looking forward to seeing how those perform on the track but as I said earlier, it’s a long season but we have work to do. We’re not happy finishing where we finished in Melbourne, we’ve got to make progress but unfortunately a lot of the other teams that we thought we’d be fighting with have made greater progress than us and really we haven’t done a good enough job and we need to really dig deep if we’re going to make progress this year. It’s going to be a really tough year which is great for the fans, just not so great for us at Williams.

     

    Q: (Dieter Rencken – Racing Lines, RaceFans.net) Zak, the new regulations post-2020, whatever is in the public domain and other stuff that we’ve heard etc, would this incentivise McLaren to actually become a complete manufacturer and provide their own engines, because obviously the manufacturers will receive bonuses and with you sourcing an engine from a French production car company doesn’t qualify you for that yet you are also a supercar manufacturer?

    ZB: You know it’s very early days, hours into understanding directionally which way this sport’s going to go with engines, so it is something that we discuss from time to time but with all that we have to accomplish right now, our heads are focused a little bit more on tomorrow and Sunday. As things become clear, then we’ll have that discussion.

     

    Q: (Louis Dekker – NOS) We heard a lot about 2021, there’s a couple of years to go. Isn’t it frustrating that nothing much can be done to get more attractive races in the short term?

    CW: Yeah, I think we’re probably all slightly disappointed by the race in Melbourne, that it didn’t bring the track action that we’d like to hope for. I think there are probably circuits coming up where we may see some more interesting racing. Melbourne’s not necessarily an easy circuit to overtake on. I hope that improves. I know that the TWG have been talking about means by which to improve the racing, to overtaking, in the coming weeks, so I think we probably have to wait and see the outcomes that they discuss to hopefully effect change for the next couple of seasons, because probably we can’t wait and our fans certainly can’t wait until 2021 for us to improve things.

    GS: I would go back to the comment that we didn’t have a lot of interesting races; we’ve had one, one swallow doesn’t make a summer. I think we should wait a little bit longer to see if it is interesting or not. As Claire said, Australia’s not the easiest circuit to overtake on anyway. I would wait a few races before we jump to conclusions but in the meantime, again as Claire said, the TWG has started its own ideas to make overtaking better and to see what’s coming out there. I stay calm. We didn’t have three years of uninteresting races, we had one this year so give us a little bit of time.

    ZB: I agree with Guenther, it’s been one race. I they’re also talking about some modifications of that particular circuit and then hopefully we can have discussions. We’ve got an upcoming strategy group meeting where we will discuss things for 2019 so hopefully we don’t have to wait until 2021 to impact some change but let’s see what’s necessary after a few more races.

  • 2018 Formula 1 Bahrain Grand Prix: Thursday Press Conference

    2018 Formula 1 Bahrain Grand Prix: Thursday Press Conference

    DRIVERS – Valtteri BOTTAS (Mercedes), Kimi RÄIKKÖNEN (Ferrari), Fernando ALONSO (McLaren)

    PRESS CONFERENCE

    Kimi, if we can start with you. It was third place in Australia for the opening and it could have been even better and you said you were happy with the car during the first weekend. Could you just tell us what about this car you like and does it suit you more than last year’s car? 

    Kimi RÄIKKÖNEN: Obviously it’s hard to say. I think it was a pretty straightforward weekend. For sure, we could have done more things and improved always, but it’s the same: it doesn’t matter if you win or are tenth of something; there are always things to improve or work on. Obviously we have a very limited amount of time over the weekend to do things, with the practice, and also with the weather it was a bit tricky. Overall, I think we were quite pleased with how things went. You want more, better positions, but I think we take that happily. As a team we did a pretty job out of it. Not much to complain about really. We want to win races, but it’s the first race out and we managed to do decent points, so we go forward here, try to make a good practice. So far the car has been working well, even with pretty limited testing over the winter, with some illness and obviously the weather was not ideal on the first test, so I’m pretty OK with how things are running, so let’s just keep doing our normal things and improving.

    Thank you. Valtteri, coming to you: it was a difficult weekend for you in Australia, especially with the crash in qualifying. How much does a weekend like that play on your mind in the gap between races and how eager are you to get out on track this weekend? 

    Valtteri BOTTAS: Well, not so much been in my mind, because everything was kind of processed during the weekend. It was a bad weekend, that’s it. Now we still have 20 races to go and we’re here in Bahrain, so nothing really to worry about at this point. We have a competitive car. We know we still have a lot of work to do to make it better. Just a bad weekend, so looking forward to this one.

    Thank you very much. Fernando, you said on Saturday evening in Melbourne that hopefully you’d finish higher than P7 or P6 in Australia and you went and finished in fifth place, so where will you finish this weekend? 

    Fernando ALONSO: I don’t know, I don’t have the crystal ball anymore! I think definitely the car has some potential. Over the winter we had some ups and downs in testing and then in Australia it was the same thing – the free practice was affected by the weather and the qualifying was not smooth enough for us to show the potential. It was a good race, a lucky race with the two Haas retirements and the Virtual Safety Car. Nevertheless, I think we take this fifth place and we move on. There is still a lot to improve for us if we want to catch up to the top three teams, but I think we have the potential there and hopefully we can unlock some performance in the next races.

    QUESTIONS FROM THE FLOOR

    Q: (Dan Knutson – Auto Action and Speedsport) Fernando, following on from that: as you say, ups and downs and still potential to come, but are happy days here again?

    FA: Well, I think there’s still quite a reasonable gap to close with the leaders, but I think it’s up to us now. It’s up to the team to deliver the performance in the next weeks, in the next four or five or six grands prix. If we are able to bring the performance to the track and close that gap and, you know, being in a reasonable distance to the pole position and the podium finishes and things like that, then it’s up to us to deliver the result on the weekend. I think the next two months are crucial for our hopes in this year’s championship, but hopefully we can keep improving the car, keep putting more performance and if it’s not a world championship fight, it will hopefully be some podium positions during the year or it can be regular top six or top five positions, not only in Australia P5 because of the Virtual Safety Car and the two Haas retirements. Maybe P5 could become a normality. That’s something we need to discover and to find out and as I said before, it’s probably the first time in the last three years that it’s up to us now to deliver that result, so we will try to do our best.

    Q: (Heikki Kulta – Turun Sanomat) Kimi, you have eight podiums here but the qualifying results have not been that good – only one P3. Is that the biggest difference you have between racing and qualifying in any circuit, and, if yes, where is that coming from?

    KR: I don’t look too closely what has happened in the past, you probably know better. To be honest we try to do our best. Sometimes it works; sometimes not and obviously, you start where you qualify. If it’s a good place or not that great you try to make the best out of it. To be honest some years it’s been working out well here. You can choose the tyres and do a different race and it worked out well. Could it be better if you started at the front? Who knows? Another weekend where we try to do a good job and be up there and see where we end up. It’s a bit unknown. This is a completely different circuit to the previous two where we’ve been in Barcelona and Australia – so yeah, we have to see how everything plans out and where we are, where others are – but it’s been a pretty decent place in past years.

    Q: (Livio Oricchio – Globoesporte.com) To Kimi and Valtteri, starting with Kimi. Kimi, you were almost seven-tenths slower in qualifying in Australia. Do you think Mercedes can also have such an advantage in qualifying here? And, in race conditions, if you believe Ferrari will be more or less in the same gap to Mercedes – or even smaller due to characteristics of the track, and considering the history of Ferrari in this track?

    KR: Who knows. You can keep guessing as long as you want, we see over the weekend where we are. I have zero interest to start guessing where we are, what’s the difference in qualifying. There’s so many things that will change that and y’know, we’ll do our best and see where we end up in qualifying and the race – but the most important part is the Sunday after the race where it will be finished. I am finished to be two seconds off if we win every Sunday. I don’t care. It’s pretty irrelevant on Saturday in that way. But yeah, I don’t know. That’s why we come here. To find out.

    VB:     I think pretty much the same. You can always guess but at this point we can only guess, so yeah… I think historically Ferrari has been good here. They had good race pace in Australia. Last year they had stronger pace here than in Australia, so I think it’s going to be a threat and they’re going to be close to us. Even Red Bull. But more than that, just can’t say. We will see how the weekend develops.

    Q: (David Croft – Sky Sports F1) Interesting day coming up tomorrow where we understand Liberty Media will be presenting their blueprint of the future of Formula One to the teams. I was just wondering, as drivers, what input you’ve had, what consultations you’ve had and where you see any changes necessary from a racing perspective to improve Formula One for the future. It’s a question to you all.

    FA: I don’t think that there is anything thing that we can probably can say about that. Definitely Liberty has been quite open to us from Day One and they’ve been asking us all of last year about opinions and different ideas that we may have. So, they were very productive conversations. So, now I think they have a plan. They will show it tomorrow to the teams and we will agree with whatever their decision is because they have all the power and they have all the knowledge of who to do things. Hopefully they’ll bring new ideas, new things that can improve the show and that will be welcome from all of us.

    Kimi, has there been any feedback you’ve been giving to Liberty about the direction of Formula One?

    KR: No, in the end it’s no our decision, it’s up to them. It’s their business. They make plans and obviously take decisions they feel is correct. I don’t know what they’re doing now. I know very little about it and I’m not interested in it, so we’ll see tomorrow what they say. It’s in many years’ time anyhow. I doubt I’ll be here so it doesn’t really bother me.

    Valtteri, anything to add?

    VB: Not really. I think Fernando covered well. In the end, it’s their decision and tomorrow we’ll see what they will recommend. It’s difficult to speculate more than that – but it will be interesting to see what they recommend.

    Q: (Jerome Pugmire – Associated Press) Valtteri, you say it’s been processed –  what happened at the Australian Grand Prix –  but how much pressure do you feel to have a good performance here? 

    VB: I think it’s a normal race weekend, that’s my feeling at the moment, honestly. Sometimes you have bad races and then there’s always the next one and of course you always want to perform but there is no point in gathering pressure from one mistake in qualifying. Of course, I always hope for a good weekend but yeah, I feel a normal race weekend ahead.

    Q: (Livio Oricchio – GloboEsporte.com) Just coming back to the previous question, to all drivers, Fernando said they have the power to change Formula One. If you had the power, what would you change in the Formula One we have today? 

    KR: I don’t have it, so…

    Q: Nothing you’d change at all?

    KR: No, I don’t have the power so what’s the point to wasting… even thinking about it because I don’t understand why you… what’s the point for me, to give you a list, because in the end I have zero power? I can’t. You understand? We can’t, we don’t make the rules, that’s my point. What’s the point of even making a story out of it.
    FA:  Well, I think it could be a closer battle, that will always be welcome but it has always been like that in F1. I remember watching the TV in the very old days… it was on television last week a race from ’90 or ’89 and apart from the first four cars, everyone was flat. We remember that era like a golden era, with big names etc and they’ve always been a big spread but I think if you see now, other series, if you watch a race of IndyCars or whatever, that unpredictable result until the last ten laps makes you excited in front of the television and now we can put (down) the qualifying order for this race right now, on Thursday and that’s a little bit sad.
    VB: Well, I think, like everyone, all the spectators, all the drivers, we would all love more closer racing like Fernando said but how to do that? It’s not in my hands.

    Q: (Dieter Rencken – Racing Lines, Racefans.net) Fernando, one of the current stated objectives this year is to return to the podium. Now based on what you’ve experienced in testing and the race, what you’ve just said etc, in order to get onto the podium you have to beat both or one or both Ferraris, one or both Mercedes, plus two Red Bulls which have got the same engine. Do you honestly believe that that’s do-able and achievable this year? 

    FA: Yes. We were two places from that podium already in Australia. They were very close, the last ten laps, Ricciardo and Kimi fighting together so anything can happen in a race. I won two races in 2008 with that ING Renault. I was on the podium in 2009 with the introduction of KERS and that car that we were, I think, ninth in the World Championship or something like that, and I was on the podium so anything can happen in F1. If you are close to that position, sooner or later that opportunity will come and we will be there to take it. I think it’s very possible this year.

  • 2017 Bahrain GP: Post Race Press Conferece

    2017 Bahrain GP: Post Race Press Conferece

    DRIVERS

    1 – Sebastian VETTEL (Ferrari)

    2 – Lewis HAMILTON (Mercedes)

    3 – Valtteri BOTTAS (Mercedes)

    PODIUM INTERVIEWS

    (Conducted by David Coulthard)

    Sebastian, your 44th victory. Normally 44 is a lucky number for Lewis but you’ve just added another win, your third time here in Bahrain, but most importantly the second of the season out of three races, great day.

    Sebastian VETTEL: Yeah, really a great day. I don’t know what to day. The last half of the in-lap when all the fireworks were there and track was lit up, it was. I just love what I do. I didn’t find any words. It was a really great team effort today. Right after the start I could feel that ‘yeah, we’re quick, we can have a word’. So really tried to put Valtteri under pressure. He didn’t do any mistakes. It was difficult down the straights to get near him. But then we obviously went for the undercut, early pit stop, worked fantastic, very good job. But when the safety came initially I thought ‘not again!’

    Yeah but this time it worked for you…

    SV: I’m not sure.

    You pitted and then when you cleared another lap we had the safety car.

    SV: I think I was lucky because the others were just close to the pit lane so they couldn’t really benefit let’s say. I don’t know. I was a bit surprised when I came out ahead of all of them because I thought with the safety car we might have lost the advantage. After that it was good. The car was really amazing to drive. I had a good feeling yesterday, so for many laps it really worked well. It was just a pleasure. I could control the pace in the end. Lewis was obviously a bit of a threat again towards the end, with the traffic you never know. But a very controlled race, the car, as I said, was a dream today. Happy Easter and thank you very much.

    Q: Lewis, pit lane, what do you think of that? Those five seconds were pretty costly today?

    Lewis HAMILTON: Yeah definitely, but firstly a big congratulations to Sebastian, he did a fantastic job today, and also a big thank you to Valtteri for being a gentleman out there. Obviously a very difficult race, it didn’t start out the best, but the pit lane was my fault, so apologies to the team for losing the time there. I tried my hardest to catch up but it was a long old way to go, it was 19 seconds. But I gave it everything I could but Ferrari did a great job today. So we’re going to push hard together, re-gather as a team and come back fighting.

    Q: You know, I’m noticing this year that even when you’re getting the wins, you’re very composed; you’re not too disappointed. What is this then? Do you really feel that this is going to be a long-game championship?

    LH: Of course the disappointment is there. Losing points for a team, particularly when you could have won the race is definitely painful, but it is what it is and all I can say is I gave it everything I could. Yeah, I mean, I’m getting old I’m catching you up.

    Q: You’ll never catch me up! Lewis congratulations. Valtteri, after the high of yesterday, a disappointing day. We heard you on the radio talking about struggling to keep the rears alive. What happened with the race balance? Talk us through that.

    Valtteri BOTTAS: Yeah, it was really a tricky race for me; struggling with the pace all through the race. I think in the first stint we found a bit of an issue with the tyre pressures and that explained the rear end struggle. But ever since that I was just rear limited and I was out of the tools on the steering wheel, so it was just oversteering all through the race, which is why the pace was slow, which is a real shame because for sure the target for today was a lot, lot higher.

    Q: It’s difficult to win in Formula One. You had a lot of support after that pole yesterday, especially within the team, so you’re feeling well settled in Mercedes?

    VB: Well, for sure I think this was overall the best weekend yet with the team, but there is much more to come.

    Well, we wish you luck with that journey. Back to Sebastian. You seem a little bit surprised by the ultimate qualifying. After qualifying the pace to Mercedes was a little bit down but you’re right in this championship, you’re leaving this grand prix leading the world championship.

    SV: Yeah, it’s a long year; I’m not really looking at that. As I said, I’m really enjoying, the car has been a pleasure. It was very good yesterday and I was a bit down because the gap was so big. I think we could have been a bit closer. But something inside me told me we have a good car and we can do well. Right from the first lap I felt the car was there and yeah, I think the Easter hunt was on. They were hiding some eggs but it looks like we found them today. No, really, really happy. Big thank you to the team, they have been working incredibly hard. The guy that has been up here, Matteo, works day and night at the track, in the factory. So really a lot of commitment from every single one and it’s great to see everything coming together.

    Q: Well, we can hear the marshals who have been supporting the grand prix celebrating by revving a motorbike here. You’ve got to say we have a tremendous welcome here in Bahrain, so it’s one your better grands prix?

    SV: Well, I guess. I’ve been reasonably successful the last couple of years. I love the trophy, I think it’s one of the most beautiful trophies we have, so when I crossed the line I was really happy because I knew we were going to get it, so I think we can leave here very happy. Not yet, because we’ve got the test next week, but yeah for now we just enjoy.

    Q: Are you doing the test?

    SV: Yes.

    You’re relentless aren’t you?

    SV: Well, I thought halfway through the race that I’m really looking forward already next time to jump in the car, which is in two days, so I’m looking forward to it.

     

    PRESS CONFERENCE

    Q: Congratulations Sebastian, obviously you got ahead of Lewis at the start. Tell us a bit about that and also the final stint, just judging the pace as he was coming through like a rocket, having come into the pits after you, how you measured that pace and measured your gap to him?

    SV: The start, obviously it was crucial for us to get between, to not allow them to get in their rhythm, pull away, do their thing. So, upset them a bit. I think we all had more or less the same start. Mine initially was maybe a tiny bit better than Lewis, which put me just about side-by-side – but their car is really long so it’s a long way to get side-by-side – but then I think I benefitted from the act I had a clear track ahead, Lewis was a bit stuck with Valtteri and it’s a bit of a tricky one to judge, so I could just take lots of risk under braking and get the move done. Then, the final stint, obviously we had quite a decent gap plus the safety margin of Lewis’ penalty – which I wasn’t sure why but it didn’t matter at that point – and I just tried to control the gap to Valtteri, maybe pulling away a little bit and at that point just controlling the gap. He was very fast when he came out. I was expecting him to be quick on a new set of supersoft tyres but probably not that quick and he was closing in. When I faced the traffic I lost a lot of time but then obviously he had to face traffic as well. In the end it was safe enough. At the beginning of the stint I really didn’t push at all, just took it easy and responded to what those two guys were doing, which obviously helped me at the end because I had a lot of tyres left.

    Lewis, coming to you, as Sebastian said, you had a tremendous amount of pace today but perhaps there were one or two too many setbacks to give you the chance to win: the start, obviously the penalty as well and the tyre choice for the final stint which you questioned on the radio. Maybe you could just drill down into those three for us.

    LH: Yeah, a challenging weekend. The start was OK but Sebastian was in my blind spot so I didn’t know whereabouts he was. I didn’t know where anyone was behind me. Valtteri got a good start and it was really just about covering him. I obviously lost position to Sebastian there. It was really hard to follow but we’re generally all similar kind of pace, and then yeah, completely my fault with the Safety Car. Supposed to have a five-second gap and I think I had a four-second gap. Just a misjudgement from myself. Valtteri was great to… obviously I had very good pace, particularly the second and last stint and I honestly believed I would be able to catch Sebastian up but obviously with a five-second penalty that made it twice as hard as it was already going to be. As I said, apologies to the team but I tried the best I could to recover it and we still got good points for the team today with a second and third but we still have this great fight and Sebastian did a great job and he had fantastic pace.

    And just on the tyre choice. You have a four-lap fresher only set of softs compared to Sebastian rather than a new set of supersofts. The team’s saying it was based on, presumably, Valtteri’s middle stint.

    LH: The tyre felt great so I believe it was the right choice. The team have generally been making really great choices this year. I thought it was going to be a supersoft but honestly I think the tyre was the best one, particularly for 16 laps pushing at the pace I was going was a long way to go. I don’t know if the supersoft would have lasted that long.

    Part of what informed that decision was, I guess, your supersoft stint Valtteri. Not the easiest but before that, Toto Wolff has said you had a problem with the generator on the grid that meant your tyres were over-inflated or had too high tyre pressure in the opening stint. Tell us about that.

    VB: Yeah, so I don’t know the exact issue but I was just told there was a problem with the tyre pressures, which I could really feel in the first stint since lap two. I was just sliding around with the rear end, struggling to get on power out of the corners, so the pace wasn’t good and Sebastian was really putting pressure and they could undercut us as well and trying to extend the first stint, I just couldn’t keep up with the pace. The tyres were just dropping. Then on the second stint it was a bit better initially. I think the second stint was not that far off. Still struggling with oversteer but much less than in the first one, and then the last stint, again, used the tools I had to adjust the car balance but still couldn’t get the rear end to work. Really strange race for me and the pace was disappointingly poor for me. Yeah, not a good day for me.

    QUESTIONS FROM THE FLOOR

    Q: (Michael Schmidt – Auto Motor und Sport) Question to Lewis and Valtteri. If you compare this race with Melbourne, is the softest compound a weakness for Mercedes? You seemed to have the same problem like in Melbourne that the rear tyres were going away.

    LH: I don’t really remember what the issue was in Melbourne. I think it was more front tyres – but I’m sure it was the rears as well. Here was maybe more rears, I would say – but yeah, I would say it’s similar.

    VB: At least for me personally yes. The softer compound has been more of a struggle with the tyres and also the hotter it is, more of a struggle. So something definitely for us to understand.

    Q: (Frederic Ferret – L’Equipe) Valtteri and Sebastian, can you tell us how difficult was the battle between the two of you?

    SV: For about the first stint. I passed you in the pit stop, didn’t I?

    VB: No, we were side-by-side at some point.

    SV: Ah,  the safety car, after the safety car. Yeah, that was hairy. I thought I did reasonably well on the restart. It was a bit tricky because we only got the message very late: ‘the safety car’s coming in’ and then, you can’t just be stupid and break the field down, do a stop-and-go but I tried to use a little bit of momentum. I thought I had a decent gap leaving the last corner and then… I don’t know, it felt like I had more headwind than in the whole race on that particular lap. I was fairly confident halfway down the straight, just looked in the mirror to check and he was coming. I saw sparks behind me everywhere and then I obviously had to defend. Yeah, then I wasn’t quite sure where he was under braking but I guess we were side-by-side so it was a lot closer than I expected, leaving the last corner. But fortunately, I stayed ahead.

    VB: Yeah, obviously it was getting close and I tried to make a move into turn four.

    SV: I was just thinking, then there was another one, exactly, because I had a bad exit and it was quite close tight. I think you locked a little bit and then I locked a little bit into turn four.

    VB: I was obviously outside so then it’s always tricky. There was some good racing but that was a short moment unfortunately.

    SV: I forgot about that…

    Q: (Livio Oricchio – GloboEsporte.com) To Bottas and Lewis: when the safety car came in, Sebastian had stopped on lap ten and the safety car came out on lap 13 and you entered the pits on the 13th lap, with the safety car. It looked like it would help a lot but for some reason it didn’t, maybe the opposite. Without the safety car, maybe Bottas could get out from the pits in front of Vettel. Do you have the same feeling? Did you have a slow stop?

    VB: Yes. Under safety car on the first stop, there was a problem with the pit stop. We lost a lot of time and maybe it would have been very very close. Maybe I would have been just in front but the team is still investigating what was the issue there. I think there was also some traffic as well because the stop was slow. One of the Red Bulls came into the pit lane and we couldn’t exit immediately so double the time.

    Q: (Livio Oricchio – GloboEsporte.com) Without the safety car?

    VB: I don’t know, to be honest.

    Q: And Lewis, I think you had… one of the front tyres was a bit slow coming off or going back on again or slight delay?

    LH: I couldn’t tell what the issue was but there was a bit of a delay. There was a domino effect, you know. If I had had a five second gap Valtteri would have pulled in, the Red Bull would have pulled in. I would have pulled in before the Red Bull, I would have got out before the Red Bull. It cascaded for me in the domino too early.

    Q: (Heikki Kulta – Turun Sanomat) Sebastian, Kimi last year was many times in front of you. What have you done that nowadays he’s always behind you?

    SV: Well, I guess for a start, compared to last year, I’ve started the race. That helped. I had my – so far the only – and I hope it stays that way – DNS last year here so not even starting was quite a disappointment. And then, I don’t now, he was behind the Red Bull in the opening of the lap and so obviously we’ve seen that it’s quite tricky to pass. I was a bit faster in the opening stint than Valtteri but I couldn’t really get close enough and I guess he probably lost a bit of time and then I just saw the final result. I don’t know what happened to his race but I think he came back to fourth, not finishing too far behind Valtteri so I think for both of us the car probably worked really well today and yeah, I think it depends on… from my own experience, how the opening lap goes and so on, but this has usually been a very very good hunting ground for Kimi, so maybe the time loss on Friday for him with the issue he had in the car didn’t help but yeah, you do your own race and then I’m sure we will talk about it afterwards.

    Q: (Livio Oricchio – GloboEsporte.com) Sebastian, in the race simulation on Friday you didn’t look like you had a very good performance from the car and also qualifying seemed to confirm it. We had this impression, looking at the long runs. And suddenly, in the race, the performance was there. Did you change the car dramatically or did the conditions on the day change and help you?

    SV: No, from yesterday to today, you can’t change anything. Friday to Saturday we did a bit but yeah, it’s not that sudden. If we could go faster in qualifying we would because qualifying higher up is always advantageous. But yeah, I had a good feeling yesterday so I was a bit surprised by how big the gap was because the car felt really good and for today, I had a good feeling because Friday was a bit mixed, I wasn’t so happy with the car. We improved it for Saturday and I thought OK, if it stays like that then today can be a good race and after a couple of laps I felt everything was making sense and yeah, obviously I was in Valtteri’s gearbox for all of the first stint and not falling back too much so that was obviously good for us, a good start with the opening lap, getting between them and then yeah, the pace was certainly key today to win.

    Q: (Sef Harding – Xero Xone News) For Sebastian, it looks like the Prancing Horse has really come alive and it looks like you’re going to have a hero’s welcome back in Maranello. What has this done for the team and the morale of the team heading into Sochi?

    SV: Yeah, I think at this stage Sochi is quite far away so I’m not willing and I don’t think the team is really looking to Sochi right now. I think we enjoy the moment. Yeah, obviously we did a massive stint over the winter. I think last year was a very good year for us. It wasn’t good in terms of results, don’t get me wrong, but I think for the team, getting together, a lot of things that had changed now seem to start clicking. Obviously it helps when straight from the box, in testing, we had a good feeling. We looked reasonably competitive. Australia obviously was a massive boost for all the team and yeah, you can see when they are singing down there, and the whole factory has really come alive so that’s great and we need to just make sure we keep it going and yeah, keep enjoying that way, but for now, I think the team has obviously done a really really great job, a lot of hard work, commitment and as I said, things start to click and hopefully that sort of success now in the first couple of races helps us to build up some sort of momentum that maybe these guys had in the past and the last couple of years, so they will be the ones to beat. It’s a long season, but for now, as I said, looking forward to tonight.

    Q: (Heikki Kulta – Turun Sanomat) Valtteri, Sochi has suited you very well so far. Do you expect to have your best weekend because of that?

    VB: Well, for sure that’s the goal. I still haven’t definitely got… there’s no race results as I’ve been hoping for so it’s always the next one. Anyway, it would be the target to have a strong weekend but Sochi has normally been pretty good for me. I really like the track layout and I have always been comfortable there so we will see. It’s a completely different type of track again, completely different kind of temperatures, different asphalt so many different things. We’ll see.

    Q: (Ralph Woodall – L’Equipe) Valtteri, how did you feel when you were ordered by the team to let Lewis pass you?

    VB: Well, I think honestly as a racing driver it’s maybe the worst thing you want to hear. That’s how it is. For sure I did it because there was potential. Lewis could challenge Sebastian. In the end it didn’t happen but the team tried which I completely understand but personally it is tough but that’s life. I didn’t have enough pace today and we need to find the reasons why that was.

  • 2017 Bahrain GP: Post Qualifying Press Conference

    2017 Bahrain GP: Post Qualifying Press Conference

    DRIVERS

    1 – Valtteri BOTTAS (Mercedes)

    2 – Lewis HAMILTON (Mercedes)

    3 – Sebastian VETTEL (Ferrari)

     

    TV UNILATERAL

    Q: It must be a brilliant feeling for you Valtteri, describe the emotion?

    Valtteri BOTTAS: Yeah, obviously really, really happy. It’s the first pole in my career. It’s my fifth season now in Formula One. It took a few races but got it and hopefully it’s the first of many. But just want to say big thanks to the team for giving me this car, to drive it on pole. We’re both starting on the front row. I think we made a really good job this weekend, to really focus on the evening conditions and we really managed to get a lot of lap time out of the car in the slightly cooler conditions and hopefully that’s going to help is tomorrow as well, so grateful for the team.

    Q: This is what you came to Mercedes for, of course. How did you do it? What was the key this evening for you personally? 

    VB: You know, it’s not an easy track to get everything right. It is quite technical; there are quite a few difficult braking points, turning ins to the corner, it’s easy to have a lock-up or just miss the apex slightly. So it is just getting the lap together and to get the car well balanced. It was a good enough lap for the pole today, so that’s good.

    Q: Well done to you. Lewis, fastest in the first runs in Q3. It looked like a little correction towards the end of the lap. Is that where it got away or was it elsewhere in the lap that you felt it slipped?

    Lewis HAMILTON: Well, firstly a big congratulations to Valtteri, he’s been working so hard, he’s gelled so well with the team and today he was just quicker. He did the better job, so hats off to him. Yeah, the first lap felt great and I looked up and the time was so close and I thought ‘wow, he’s doing some… that was a good lap, he did a great job’. But I was losing quite a bit of time through the first sector, that was generally my weaker point, which is actually unusual; usually it’s a stronger point for me. I’ll work on it for tomorrow, but Valtteri found some great pace, particularly through the first sector, the second and third ended up being quite good but just overall a little bit down. But a great battle and that’s how close I think qualifying should always be. It forces us all to be more on the limit. I’m generally happy with the job I did and it’s great for the team to be one-two.

    Q: Very well done. Speaking of close, Sebastian, it was very close in Q2, I think it was six one hundredths of a second, the top three. Was it a little bit dispiriting for you when you saw they suddenly found another four tenths of a second when we went into Q3?

    SV: Yeah, it was. I think overall I was very happy with how qualifying went, with how the car felt, because we had some issues yesterday. Nothing wrong but we just tweaked the balance for today I think in the right direction, so I was happy how it turned out to be. Felt good; Q2 I thought ‘OK, this will be tight’. I was very happy to go into Q3. Then I was very happy with my first lap. I crossed the line, looked up and saw both of them were ahead and then when I got the time, yeah, I was a bit down to be honest because four tenths was a lot more than I expected, also given how good the lap felt. Then, on the next run I just tried a little bit too hard everywhere but equally I had nothing to lose. I was quite safe also to cars behind. So I was quite confident, also the lap felt good as I said, so I tried a bit harder. It didn’t work; I went slightly slower. Obviously if I go a tenth quicker it’s not enough, so I tried to do a bit more but yeah, hopefully we can do a bit more tomorrow.

    Q: Well done. Back to Valtteri, obviously a lot of satisfaction at your first pole but no champagne at this point. I guess you go to be tonight dreaming of your first grand prix victory tomorrow?

    VB: I think the main thing is that I need to personally, and as a team, we need to enjoy for a very short period of time… you need to enjoy what you have done so far in the weekend. But the main thing is tomorrow so there is not point to start dreaming about anything. We need to look at everything, whatever we can do tomorrow, work together as a team and plan a good strategy, a plan for the race tomorrow. For me it’s all about just focusing for the race and getting the maximum out of it but definitely a good place to start and I think as a team we can be really strong tomorrow and we can get that one-two, the first one for the year.

    PRESS CONFERENCE

    Q: Valtteri, I think if you were to plot your qualifying in the last three races it would just be about three-tenths off Lewis in Australia, less than two in China and now you’ve gone and got the pole. Describe to us how you’ve chipped away at that, how you’ve worked at that.

    VB: Well, for sure, every single qualifying is always different circumstances and different track, different scenarios but I definitely feel I’ve been getting more and more comfortable with the car, how it is behaving and also working with the team and fine-tuning the setup of the car. I’m getting better with that as well with the engineers. So overall just, yeah, feeling more confident in the car and today it felt good, especially towards the end of the qualifying in Q3. Got some good laps, felt that I could extract pretty much the maximum out of the car. That’s always a good feeling and for sure it always takes a bit of time to get there.

    Q: Lewis, obviously you managed to find that little bit of a margin today that Sebastian was talking about in qualifying – but generally, it is pretty close in terms of race pace, what we’ve seen so far, particularly on a track like this: higher temperatures; looking after the rear tyres is important. What kind of a battle are you expecting tomorrow in the grand prix?

    LH: Well obviously today we had a bit of a margin to the Ferraris but generally in race trim they seem to be a bit quicker but I guess we’ll see tomorrow. Perhaps it will level-out a little bit more. It’s definitely going to be a close battle. Valtteri’s long runs were very good and I think… I don’t necessarily know how good their long-runs were but I heard that they were quite quick, the Ferraris so it’s definitely going to be close, all of us, and looking after the tyres is definitely very difficult. Whether it’s a one or two stop will be interesting to see. Temperatures, all those different things. Hopefully we’ll have a great battle tomorrow.

    Q: Sebastian, maybe you could articulate for us, it seems to have been quite tough for everybody – and Valtteri referenced it earlier on – to put a perfect lap together, to join all of the dots, and particularly this weekend going into qualifying. Can you just articulate why you think that is today?

    SV: Well I think generally we struggle less, everyone struggles less in the evening because the temperatures are dropping. Something we’ve seen now for two days is that generally we struggle a bit more, everyone with the hot conditions. The tyres don’t hold up as well as they used to in the first two races, so in a way, it’s probably a bit more similar to how it probably was last year, that you can’t attack all the way through the first flying lap. So I think that’s a difference. At Valtteri touched on, this track historically has been fairly technical. Corners like 9-10, they are probably built to lead drivers into mistakes so it is very easy to get it a little bit wrong and overshoot a bit, so those two things combined I think make it quite tricky. Yeah, at the end of the day it’s probably risk-assessment. When you are steering towards the corner and then you have to make a judgement how much you trust the car, how much risk you take, and in the end if you take a lot and you get the reward, it feels great. If you take you a lot and it goes wrong, you lose time.

    QUESTIONS FROM THE FLOOR

    Q: (Heikki Kulta – Turun Sanomat) Valtteri, congratulations, I counted that is has been 168 races without a Finn in the pole. How important is it for you to put Finland back in the polesitters group?

    VB: Thank you Heikki, and congratulations to you as well! Sure, it feels good. I didn’t even realise it’s that long – nearly ten years.

    SV: Who? Where? [Heikki Kovalainen, Silverstone] Oh.

    VB: It’s good to break that, it’s a lot of races without a Finn on pole so that is good and obviously very proud always to drive for Finland, for my country and very glad for all the support I’ve got from there. So yeah, happy.

    SV: Where were you in 2008. F3?

    VB: Formula Renault!

    Q: (Ysef Harding – Xero Xone News) This question is for Valtteri. Valtteri, first off, congratulations on your first pole with the team. It really looks like you are starting to find your groove out there, really find your mojo. Do you feel that that’s starting to come alive for you in the car? That you’re finding that groove, you’re bonding with the car out there on the track now?

    VB: I definitely feel now much more comfortable in the car, with the car than, for example, qualifying in Melbourne. So yeah, the more laps, the more time you spend with a car and driving it, you get to be more at one with the car. So, definitely feel better and better, like I said earlier. Yeah. Felt better here than, for example, last week in China in qualifying. It’s good. I need to keep doing that progress and keep trying to get better all of the time.

    Q: (Michael Schmidt – Auto Motor und Sport) Sebastian, any explanation why the gap was bigger here than in the two races before?

    SV: No, not really. I haven’t seen obviously where we lost most of the time but I think a little bit spread everywhere. I think Sector One, Sector Three stood out so Sector Two wasn’t too bad. Yeah, there’s more straights in Sector One and Three, so I don’t know if they had an update for here that allowed them to push harder but it seems that we lost a little bit of time everywhere and maybe a little bit more than usual down the straights. Yeah. I think for tomorrow the most important thing is that the car felt good today and I think we should be closer. Hopefully it’s going to be a tight race and then we’ll see.

    Q: (Khodr Rawi – motorsport.com) Question to all three drivers. Are you surprised by the lap times set today in qualifying? Because the pole position is faster by around seven-tenths compared to last year pole position. Where you expecting faster lap times? Thank you.

    LH: It’s seven-tenths? We’re seven-tenths quicker than last year? I can’t remember. I wasn’t even thinking of that. The car feels better here than it did last year but I don’t have an answer for why it’s not a bigger gap than it was in the past. At least they’re faster.

    SV: I think it was expected that we go quicker this year, depending on the layout: sometimes a bit more, sometimes a bit less. Probably this layout is one of the least favourite ones this year in terms of how much faster we can go, compared to the year before.

    Q: (Chris Medland – Racer) Valtteri, you said in the week that you bounced back very quickly from the error you made in China and put it behind you on Tuesday, I think. You allowed yourself to be annoyed on Monday but does this really help to properly put it to bed and look forward to have a result like this straight away afterwards?

    VB: Well, I think it’s always nice to have a good result whether you’ve had a good or bad weekend before but for sure if you’ve had a bit of a struggle in the last race it’s always nice to start the weekend in a good way but anyway tomorrow is the day that then matters but it’s good. I’d rather be on pole today than anything less, so let’s see tomorrow.

    Q: (Phil Duncan – PA) To all three of you: does Valtteri’s pole now mean that this is a three-way fight? We’ve all been saying it’s just going to be between Lewis and Seb; is it going to be a three-way battle now for the championship?

    LH: It always was, at least three, maybe four. Yeah, Valtteri’s been right there with us from the beginning so nothing changes.

    VB: I think it’s obviously very early days to speak about the title fight, how it’s going to be. It’s going to be a massively long season. As I said at the first races, it’s going to be a massive year in terms of development for the cars and which team is going to develop the most and that’s going to be the fight for the title. Too early to say about the title fight but for sure we are now the two best teams and I feel I’m now in the game.

    SV: Well, today is the day for Finland and Formula One. Keeping it Finnish, I would say yes.

    Q: (Heikki Kulta –Turun Sanomat) Lewis, like I said that the last time you lost the pole to a Finnish driver was 2008; do you still remember how that felt? Does it feel the same as now?

    LH: Cold! Yeah, I remember 2008, Silverstone, I remember it very very clearly. Heikki did a fantastic job. He was quicker throughout the weekend and we had a different set-up from testing which he chose and he was just quicker and it ended up being one of those… Back then you divided the cars by two laps of fuel and often I would have… sometimes I would have the lighter fuel load;  on that weekend, he was just quicker and we needed as a team to be at the front so he ended up having the lighter fuel load and did a great job but obviously I got a great start in the race. You know, when you asked the first question I had a really crazy thought: I’m sure at home he (Heikki Kulta) has like a wall and every day he goes home and he ticks off – ‘damn, it’s another race that…’ He’s got a whole wall, 130 or 180 or whatever it is, 168 crosses so I’m sure on Monday you’re going to be repainting the wall, a nice clean one!

    SV: Does the word excited exist in Finnish?

    VB: Kind of.

    LH: It’s probably something really simple. What is “exciting” in Finnish?

    VB: (Inaudible)

    SV: See! It doesn’t exist!

    LH: It’s not one that’s really used much in the vocabulary.

    VB: I don’t know really.

    Q: (Livio Oricchio – GloboEsporte.com) To Lewis and Bottas: in 2014 we had a wonderful battle between Lewis and Nico here at this Grand Prix. Are you free to fight tomorrow or after what happened in Barcelona and Austria last year there are some internal rules: you can put the car here, you cannot there? It depends what position your teammate is in?

    LH: Are we allowed to fight? Nothing’s changed in the sense that we are allowed to fight. It’s the same as it was last year – as always as it remains respectable but yeah, we can fight hard out there. None of us wants to not finish the race. It’s just about being sensible and making sure we bring both cars home but generally yes, we are allowed to fight.

    VB: Yeah, I agree. I’m really happy that we are allowed to fight and I’m sure we can do it hard, hard but fair and try to avoid what we did last year with Lewis in turn one. We actually collided.

    LH: I’m behind this time…

    VB: I’m sure we can be alright.

    SV: I wouldn’t mind!

    Q: (Ysef Harding – Xero Xone News) Lewis, this looks like this is starting to get interesting now that Valtteri’s got a pole and he may have a good result and you’ve gotten very happily because of the battle with Sebastian Vettel. You looked about as happy as a warrior getting ready to go into battle. Do you look forward to it possibly being a three-way battle at the end of this weekend?

    LH:  I do, I do. I think it’s great how close it is between the teams because then it brings out the best in each driver and I just feel… when you feel like you’re at your best and you do a good job and you’re fighting against someone else who is doing just as good a job it’s that much more exciting and the more drivers we have in the mix then the more tense it gets. Fortunately…  don’t think for a long time it’s been more than three or four drivers but anyway I’m really happy it’s more than just the two of us. There’s going to be lots of ups and downs throughout the year but Valtteri’s definitely keeping me on my toes and I’m thoroughly happy for him today. As I said before, he really deserved that lap and his first pole… I know how special it is to have your first pole position. It is just amazing. You dream of it as a kid and I know that he will be enjoying it and tomorrow could be his first Grand Prix win but obviously I will try my hardest to win the race but whichever the case, he’s going to have one at some stage this year. If it’s not tomorrow it will be…because he’s getting stronger and stronger.

    Q: (Michael Schmidt – Auto, Motor und Sport) Sebastian, according to the power unit report, a turbocharger and one of the E-motors have been changed in your car. Is that a concern this early in the season?

    SV: Not really. Obviously it was not planned but yeah, it doesn’t set us back. I think we’re doing fine. I think we pushed very hard over the winter. I think we did a very very good job, especially on the engine side, power unit side. I think there’s been a very big step so it feels great, feels like a lot more power than last year and yeah, obviously the year isn’t over yet but as I said, it shouldn’t be a problem

  • Vettel Makes it Two From Two After Topping Time Sheets in FP2

    Vettel Makes it Two From Two After Topping Time Sheets in FP2

    Sebastian Vettel edged Valtteri Bottas to go fastest in the Second Free Practice session for the Bahrain Grand Prix.

    Vettel’s time of 1:31.310 was just enough to edge Bottas’ time of 1:31.351. Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo was third fastest on the evening with a time of 1:31.376, 0.066s off Vettel’s time.

    Kimi Raikkonen was 4th fastest for Ferrari ahead of Lewis Hamilton in 5th. Hamilton had a bit of trouble setting a fast time. He ran wide on his first timed lap and the second time he almost ran into the back of Renault’s Nico Hulkenberg at T9. Hamilton had to avoid running into the back of while approaching T9 at full chat while Hulkenberg was on a cool down lap. The stewards said that they will investigate the incident after the session. They have subsequently summoned the two drivers for their explanation about the incident.

    Hulkenberg finished 6th fastest ahead of William’s Felipe Massa in 7th.

    Max Verstappen finished P8 after spending some time in the garage after sustaining damage to his floor and a few other parts on his car caused by the T-Wing that broke off Bottas’ Mercedes.

    Romain Grosjean finished 9th for Haas while Daniil Kvyat completed the top 10 for Toro Rosso.

    While Vettel may have set the fastest time of the session he did run into some trouble just before his long runs. His car shut down out of Turn 13. The quick thinking German undid his harnesses, reached over the steering the hit the neutral button to let his car coast to the bottom of Turn 14. He kept going and got it to the pit lane where his team was able to push him back to the garage. Ferrari were able to diagnose the problem and get Vettel out for his long runs.

    Carlos Sainz also suffered from engine problem after his car came to a grinding halt at Turn 11 after smoke was seen out of the back of the Toro Rosso.

    Stoffel Vandoorne who ended his FP1 early had to cut his FP2 session short after engine troubles put an end to his session. This is quite concerning for Honda after they opted to change his engine ahead of FP2 while they investigated the problem with his FP1 engine.

    Red Bull have shown some good long run pace and are up there with Ferrari and Mercedes. Hamilton was unable to complete a flying lap simulation but he looked very quick the times he did get to complete a few sectors. It will be close between the Ferrari’s and Mercedes once again in qualifying.

     

    Photo credit: Scuderia Ferrari Formula One