Q: (Paolo Ianieri – La Gazzetta dello Sport) Kimi, were you surprised McLaren were so far behind you?
KR: No, I think it’s been the same all weekend. I already said in Australia that our speed should be fine. When you start behind someone, as in Australia, you can never use your own speed. Australia is not exactly a normal circuit, so sometimes you get slightly wrong results there. Last year we were much faster than everybody there, and coming here we were not so happy anymore, so it’s a bit the opposite now. I think the next race can be different again, so we need to wait and see and after a few races we will get a clearer picture where we are exactly.

Q: (Livio Oricchio – O Estado de Sao Paulo) Kimi, in the lap that you came in for the first pit stop, you did the best T1 and T2 times of the race at that stage. Could you do that with Massa in front of you or did you expect him to go into the pits to do that?
KR: Like I said already, when he went in my car got much better because I was quite close. It always affects the car. I think it needs to be around six seconds in front of you before you don’t feel anything anymore. I was only less than two seconds, so once he pulled in my car just got much quicker and I was able to go more than half a second faster on the in lap. It was enough, we knew that it was going to be close and it worked out perfectly. Once I was in front of him the car was much better in the second stint and I was able to pull away.

Q: (Juha Päätalo – Financial Times Germany) Heikki, even in the middle stint, when you couldn’t quite go at the pace of the BMWs, although you said that the tyres were working quite well, do you think you had no chance to beat them today, and how do you see your team in comparison to Ferrari?
HK: I think there was no way we could match Ferrari. BMW also seemed to be very strong on race day, but then again, when you start further down on the grid, it’s always going to be a compromise. You initially lose quite a lot of time, the first few laps you can lose a couple of seconds a lap if you get stuck in traffic and you’re fighting for position, so by the time I sort of got going in the race, the gap to Robert was seventeen seconds. It’s impossible to say what would have happened had we started where we qualified, but in any case, I think we did the maximum today that was possible and third place for me was more than enough today.

E.A. © CAPSIS International
Source: FIA