Lewis HAMILTON (Mercedes), Nico ROSBERG (Mercedes) and Sebastian VETTEL (Ferrari)
Q: Lewis, clearly today was a day for the ultrasoft tyres but getting them switched on – obviously people had different techniques for doing that. You did a 1m 21/22s bedding in lap. How hard was it, how big a challenge was it to get the tyres working today in these changeable and quite cool conditions?
LH: It was very similar to the last race, to be honest. The ultrasoft is not particularly soft for whatever reason, they’re just such hard compounds; it takes us so long to get the temperature into them, so yeah, you need two laps to really bed the heat into the tread. But I think it was the same for everyone. Most people were generally in the same boat. You could push for the first lap but they were just not quite ready, so that’s why people do the second one.
Q: Nico, I guess the way you could look at this if you were taking a glass half full approach is statistically it’s the least important pole in terms of the race outcome of the season, so does that give you some optimism for the race tomorrow?
NR: For now, I’m just thinking about now where I just missed out on pole, very close but for sure yeah, from second anything’s possible, I know that and I will give it everything, but definitely the pole would have been better today, for sure. But I will still try and go for the win tomorrow.
Q: Sebastian, you referenced the updates, obviously you’ve got the new turbo here, tell us about the impact you think that’s made for you in terms of qualifying and how it will enable you to maximise the potential of your power unit in your car tomorrow in the Grand Prix?
SV: It’s secret! No, there’s no big surprise. I think we expected to bring performance to the car and that’s what it did. I think this is probably a track where it’s quite important. There are a lot of straights so yeah, I think that’s why we decided to bring it here as well and as I said, it worked and it should help us also tomorrow, not just today.
QUESTIONS FROM THE FLOOR
Q: (Peter Windsor – F1 Racing) Lewis, the lap looked pretty lively, the pole lap. I just wonder from your perspective if it was near perfection? We didn’t see very corner, every aspect of it. Were there any areas of it where you could still have improved, do you think?
LH: I think for all us there’s always time to improve for sure, but honestly qualifying wasn’t a great qualifying for me in terms of laps, they weren’t particularly that great. Even my pole lap was definitely at the lower end of the good laps of pole laps that I’ve had so being as that’s the fact, I’m pretty happy that I’m still on pole.
