Sebastian Vettel Q&A: We are very confident 17 Nov 2012
Taking the inaugural pole at a brand new track, doing it on your 100th Grand Prix appearance, and out-qualifying your sole title rival by a hefty margin - it’s a pretty good way to spend a Saturday. Now Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel must aim for the same level of perfection on Sunday if he is to become a triple world champion…
Q: Is it a satisfying feeling to start from pole position at your 100th Grand Prix?
Sebastian Vettel: It is always a good feeling, doesn’t really matter whether it is the 100th or the 58th. So, yes. It is good to be on the front row, and it is good to start from the clean side of the track. Especially after yesterday’s practice we thought that you definitely want to start from the clean side. Generally it was important for me to be able to feel the car, and that I was constantly able to get a little more out of it the more laps we did. For tomorrow we are very confident, as the car feels great and therefore let us see what we can get out of this.
Q: Looking at the championship and your only competitor, Fernando Alonso, how much information will you want to get on his status during the race?
SV: Of course we know the situation of the championship very well, not least because we constantly get reminded about it. Generally it doesn’t really matter where Fernando is during the race, as we have to focus on ourselves, and get the best out of our car. If you bother about what the others are doing, in my eyes you would not be able to get out the optimum. But if we are able to get the best out of the car - and us -then this will enlarge the chance of winning the championship this year.
Q: Did you sort out yesterday’s problems to be confident about the reliability of the car?
SV: Yes, we are optimistic as always, as also we understood yesterday’s problem and have sorted it out. There are no concerns that this very problem will come up again.
Q: Were you surprised to see Ferrari and Fernando that far behind on the starting grid?
SV: A little bit, yes. Although we don’t know if it was because they had a problem with the car, or because it is that their car is not working so well on this track.
Q: Looking at all the results from this weekend, where you have topped every single session, how confident does this make the team that nothing will go wrong tomorrow?
SV: We have raced so many races already to know that anything can happen during the race itself. All the results from this weekend have not brought us any points, so we will still be cautious and sharp for tomorrow. Still it is a good feeling to have been able to do so well during this weekend. Although at the end of qualifying it got a bit tight as Lewis [Hamilton] was looking very strong, and I had the feeling that I would have been able to push even more, but then it was enough to be on pole position. Here you need to work quite hard to get the tyres up on temperature so that you are able to get a quick lap, and exactly there we had a few difficulties running into traffic.
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