Hungarian GP - Qualifying press conference - Pt.2

Questions from the floor.

Q: (Paulo Ianieri - La Gazzetta dello Sport).
Fernando, 1.2 seconds. Is it as big as you could have expected or does it comes as a surprise?

Fernando Alonso:
Surprise, no doubt. I think four or five days ago we were winning the race in Hockenheim and Ferrari was the quickest car there on Sunday. Six days later we are 1.2 seconds behind, so it's a surprise, no doubt, but as I said, I'm still happy with the car performance, there was nothing wrong with it. We will maximise our potential and it's 1.2 seconds to me but two seconds for fifth or sixth position, so I think there are people who are more worried than us.

Q: (Peter Farkas - Auto Motor).
Lap times have been amazingly quick here this year, much quicker than last year. Do you have an explanation for that?

Sebastian Vettel:
I think first of all, if you compare the cars and the lap times we did last year, if you compare this year's cars to last year's cars, they are built around the double diffuser. Last year, some cars had the double diffuser and other cars then adapted it, so it was different. For this year, I think everyone knew what the regulations would be. Yeah, then like Fernando said, especially if you look at Q3 times, we don't do it with fuel anymore, so of course they will be quite a bit faster. In the end, you need the conditions, you need the right weather. I think the circuit was exceptionally clean from Friday onwards. Usually, in Hungary, you see the track improvement is massive, so I think these are the main reasons.

Q: (Alvaro Faes - La Nueva Espana).
Fernando, what racing strategy will you use tomorrow? Will you be defensive to keep the McLarens away from you, or will you attack to try to overtake at least one of the Red Bulls or both?

FA:
I think we will see. As we said now, the start will be an important part of the race, first corner, but there is nothing you can plan. It will depend on how the car starts tomorrow afternoon. Sometimes we did some very good starts, sometimes not so good, so fingers crossed tomorrow it is one of the good ones. But I will be happy to be on the podium. There is no doubt. I think that knowing how the weekend has gone so far, winning the race would be a dream, but we need to be realistic, we need to know that there are two cars much quicker than us, so at the moment we deserve third position in qualifying, and theoretically we deserve third position in the race, so we will see what we can do. At the moment, the McLaren drivers are leading the (Drivers') championship and the McLaren team is leading the Constructors', so we need to take points and reduce the gap to them. Once the Red Bulls are leading the championship, if they do so, we will see what we can do, but at the moment hopefully we need to keep taking points from McLaren.

Q: (Paulo Ianieri - La Gazzetta dello Sport).
Yesterday you said that you were worried about qualifying pace, and not so much for the race pace. Are you still confident that should you be able to be second after the first turn, this could be the only chance to try to win the race?

FA:
I think it's something we need to check tomorrow as well. Sometimes on Saturday we've been not close enough to Red Bull to fight for pole positions and then on Sunday we are much closer on race pace. This was the case when we were three or four tenths away from pole position. Today we are 1.2 seconds, so even if tomorrow we have a better race pace, it may still not be enough to fight for victory but we will see. Anything can happen. There is a 70 lap race, a very demanding circuit for drivers, for gearboxes, engines, brakes. It is not an easy circuit. We've seen very interesting races here in Hungary, so we will fight until the chequered flag.

Q: (Carlos Miquel - Diario AS).
Mark, is your car exactly the same as Vettel's?

Mark Webber:
Yup.