Thursday press conference - Turkish GP - Pt.2

Questions from the floor

Q: (Dan Knutson - National Speed Sport News)

To all of you: Bernie Ecclestone has announced that there will be a US Grand Prix in Austin, Texas. I’m looking at your T-shirts and caps and I see names like Mercedes Benz, Red Bull, AT&T. How important is it for your teams’ sponsors to have a race in the US?

Mark Webber:

It’s a huge market, we know that. A lot of people live in North America and they’re very passionate about their sport. There’s naturally a lot of people involved in our business that do business in North America. If it’s of benefit for all of us to go there and hold a Grand Prix under their noses and for them to embrace Formula One racing as best they can – because obviously it’s a different kind of sport for them, let’s say – so we’ve seen in the past that it has worked OK at Indy, and it can be exciting in Texas, so let’s see how it goes. For Red Bull, we sell a lot of cans over there and it will be good if we can sell some more.

Michael Schumacher:

Certainly, it’s one of the beautiful places around the world to go to and enjoy some good times, lots of great opportunities. For me, naturally, I love to go and race there as it allows me to spend some days before the race to hang out there and enjoy it. But more important for most of the manufacturers that are involved in Formula One, America is a very important market. If you think of how many countries like Brazil, Argentina, all those countries in South America, how many we had of those guys at Indy, then we should have even more, because logistically it’s easier to go to Texas than all the way up to Indy. Hopefully, that’s the case because one of the points that we have been missing is the sort of excitement that Formula One can create and can give to the fans that are in America. Yeah, it has not fully arrived, but quite honestly you cannot expect those things to happen overnight. You have to give it continuation, and this continuation hasn’t happened for a long enough time, plus maybe we haven’t yet got a known or successful American driver in our group that would be quite helpful for this. But certainly from our point of view we are very happy to go there.

Karun Chandhok:

It’s more of the same, really. I think America is a more developed market than say India. It’s a similar thing, they are huge markets with untapped potential as far as Formula One and its partners are concerned. I think that to have a dedicated venue is a new thing. I guess Watkins Glen, so Bernie was saying, was the last time we had one. Maybe that’s what it needs, a dedicated Formula One site. I’m very excited to go there. My mum’s from San Antonio and my grandparents still live in Texas, so I’d love to go there and have a race.

Rubens Barrichello:

On a personal side I love America as a whole. I’ve also spent a lot of time there with the family, so it’s really good to be going to that side. From the manufacturers’ point of view, it’s just a great opportunity that’s back again and we should never have stopped racing there. Even though the fans don’t know Formula One, they are aware and they obviously know more of NASCAR and Indycar but it’s a great opportunity for us to show our show and get together.

Jarno Trulli:

I like going to the US, I think it’s a good market and I also think that the Formula One circus is a worldwide business, so why not? We would be more than welcome to go there.

Q: (Juha Paatalo - Financial Times Germany)

Mark, since you started your career in Melbourne 2002, this is the first time that you’re leading the championship. Can you just tell us how it has felt for the last ten days, having that experience after such a long time in Formula One?

Mark Webber:

I’m not that interested in the points at the moment. It’s nice to have quite a few but the results in the last few races have been what it’s all about, so that’s been very rewarding. We know that there’s been some missed opportunities in the past and we need to keep those to a minimum, so we’re looking forward, keep trying to do what we’ve been executing the last few events and that can be good for us in the future, but I don’t feel any different really, when I get out of bed, because all of us are pretty much on the same points anyway, so I’m not doing anything that different.

Q: (Ian Gordon - News of the World)

Michael, without referring to Monaco itself, do you think the sport’s become more safety conscious over the years and that drivers should be encouraged to overtake and not be punished? Think back to the case of Lewis (Hamilton) over the last couple of years when he overtook in Belgium and got penalised by the stewards, and the same with you. Surely the drivers want to race and the fans want to see people racing?

Michael Schumacher:

There’s no point in getting into past incidents, but the point is that if I understand the situation clearly, the FIA has identified something that happened in Monaco and they want to improve the situation, so I think that’s actually something good in the sport and I’m quite happy for this to happen.

Q: (Ian Parkes - The Press Association)

Michael, Sir Jackie Stewart remarked in an interview yesterday that given the lack of success so far in your comeback that you were damaging your legacy. Do you agree or disagree with his comments so far?

Michael Schumacher:

I guess it’s pretty fair that he has opinion and I have mine and I naturally disagree, yeah.

Q: (Alan Baldwin - Reuters)

Mark, Sebastian (Vettel) has a different chassis here this weekend. Apparently they found a defect in it from the last couple of races. I just wondered how much that would have affected his performance in the last two races, how much that might have accounted for the fact that he wasn’t really getting that close to you?

Mark Webber:

Obviously I wasn’t driving his car, so it’s difficult to know, to be honest. We’ll see.

Q: (Ronald Lewis - The Times)

Mark, during your leaner years in Formula One, did you always maintain the belief that you would eventually get a car as good as you have now? And when did you realise it was such a good car, as well?

Mark Webber:

Coming into Formula One, obviously with a small team like Minardi, moved to Jaguar and that were some exciting times there in terms of getting your first few points and starting to race towards the front which is a nice thing when you can start to do that in Formula One. Obviously we know I had some tough years after Jaguar and then a fresh opportunity at Red Bull and the clear attraction at Red Bull was Adrian (Newey). His ability to be able to produce good cars is well known, so I think that when we got the regulation change, that was something that was very attractive for our team, in our group of guys and it’s turned out that the last few years we’ve certainly been towards the front. It’s nice to be in the team after all the work we put in during those tough years, even when I first arrived at Red Bull. So you are always hopeful that you get an opportunity to drive a car which is very competitive. We know that it’s an important part of the job but also as a driver you don’t hang around this business that long if you’re not performing either. So I obviously needed to keep performing, doing my best and hopefully something one day would have come around and at that moment, for sure I’ve had the most competitive cars in the last few years, there’s no question about that.

Q: (Andrea Cremonesi - La Gazzetta dello Sport)

Two questions for Mark: are you going to use the F-duct at this Grand Prix and secondly, what advantage can that give you? Do you expect to have the same advantage that you had in Spain against the other competitors, so a huge advantage, and who will be the first challenger here: McLaren or Ferrari?

Mark Webber:

Yes, we give the F-duct a go tomorrow, we’re going to give it a chance. To answer your second question: Barcelona, clearly we were pretty competitive there, particularly in qualifying. I think it’s going to be very, very hard to do that again so, as we saw in Monaco, we know it’s a very, very different circuit completely but things tightened up there a lot, so venue to venue, things can move around and even within the race, we saw in Barcelona that things were a little bit different. Lewis was our closest competitor in that Grand Prix, so you can argue that if we had a Turkish Grand Prix after Barcelona, you might say that the McLaren might be the guys that might be our challengers here but we’re also mindful of the fact that Ferrari – and also if Mercedes have a clean weekend – there’s lots of guys that can come towards us, so we’re definitely not taking anything for granted, we know we’re working incredibly hard to get the results we have and it’s not easy to get them.

Q:

Mark, how big is the competition between you and Sebastian?

Mark Webber:

Oh, every competitor is on the grid [is competition] for all of us. We know that towards the front we have different levels of car performance, so it’s obvious that I’m not racing Jarno this weekend but there’s guys that you have more fights with throughout the season and clearly Sebastian is in a good car, he’s quick and there’s going to be a healthy competition there as always. There’s no secret that we like to beat each other and that’s how it should be. It’s healthy, very good balance within the team and Sebastian’s had his days in the past where he’s been virtually untouchable and I’m sure I hope that they don’t happen too much in the future but he’s very quick, we know that, and I’ve got to try and keep those to a minimum. So it’s a good battle.

Q: (Alan Baldwin - Reuters)

Mark, I’m wondering when the last time was that you won three races in a row. This is your chance this weekend but has it happened before in your career that you’ve done that?

Mark Webber:

I think I won a couple in F3000 but maybe not three in a row. I don’t know, probably Formula Ford.

Q: (Miran Alisic - Korpmedia)

For the four of you whose countries have qualified for the World Cup: before the next Grand Prix starts, the football World Cup will start in South Africa, so what do you think the prospects are for your countries and maybe you can include the prospects for the smallest country, which is my home country, Slovenia?

Mark Webber:

Australia, [to Schumacher] yes, we’ve qualified, yeah. We are there, we’re playing you guys actually, in the first one, we’re playing you guys in the first match, so we hope that we can get a draw against the Germans. We’ll take a draw. But we’re in a tough group. Of course I want the Australians to do well. We have a tough group with Ghana, I think, and Germany, and the other team is also strong, so if we can get through it’s good, because if we finish second and England win their group, obviously we play England and of course we want to kick their asses, so then they will have big problems in their team. I honestly hope it’s a good World Cup for South Africa. That country has gone through a lot, we’ve seen some big problems there in the past and I just hope it goes off really smoothly. As a big sports fan I hope it’s a big sporting event for the people of South Africa and it turns out to be good.

Michael Schumacher:

Obviously, we all cross fingers for our nation and, naturally, after some good results in past championships, we still hope to do a little bit better now and maybe win a final, although it’s very optimistic to say that, especially with the sad happening to one of the most important players that we have had recently. Nevertheless, I’m sure that they will keep trying and we cross fingers. I’m sorry for you Mark, but…

Rubens Barrichello:

Yeah, I’m sorry for both of you! It’s a great time for me, it’s a great time for Brazil and I agree with Mark. It’s great to have it there in South Africa, I think it’s a great opportunity to appreciate new things and I think they’ve done really well with security and everything, so it should be a great show and obviously I hope that Brazil can just keep it up.

Jarno Trulli:

I’m not really into football so much but yeah, I think we won the last World Championship in Germany and obviously we will want to be back again, to see what we can do. It’s not going to be easy but I think it’s important as everyone has said that the football World Championship is going to South Africa, it’s good for the people there and I guess it’s one of the most important sporting events in the World. We will all be watching and cheering them on and hope to see some very good days of sport. I want to see the players playing well, successfully and nicely. That’s very important for the sport.