Monaco GP - Post-qualifying press conference - Pt. 2

Drivers: Michael Schumacher (Mercedes), Mark Webber (Red Bull Racing) and Nico Rosberg (Mercedes)

Questions from the floor

Q: (Vincent Marre - Sports Zeitung).
Michael, you set a fantastic pole position; I would like to know how you rate this one among all the others?

Michael Schumacher:
May I just say that you have to see two different chapters of life and this is the second one, which stands by itself, because in this Silver Arrow time, in terms of qualifying is the best position I have been in and luckily I'm able to give back, in that way, all the trust that has been shown in me over the last two and a half years.

Q: (Leonid Novozhilov- F1 Life).
Michael, is this pole position the best of your life and secondly, how many poles do you think you can set for the team this season?

Michael Schumacher:
Similar answer to what I just said before, because how I rate this pole to others... it's the first one of the second part of my career and naturally that's the better one, because it's the first one. It's just sweet and a good feeling after you have come back and have hoped for better results in all circumstances at the end of the day, after why and what has happened, but to finally get it together and being able to prove it - that's much more important and therefore I'm certainly delighted.

Q: (Dan Knutson - Honorary).
Mark, on Thursday you were not very optimistic about getting on the front row. What did the team change to make the car so much better today?

Mark Webber:
We certainly pulled the balance together a lot more. Obviously there are no real fast corners here but there are a few where you need to be able to keep the car in the line, especially into Casino but also through the Swimming Pool. You need to have a very good rhythm and pace through there, which we didn't really have on Thursday, so the car, between low and high speed wasn't great. We really, really pulled that together. Also I think the track helped as well, the rubber on the circuit helped pull it together. The driver always brakes a little bit later on Saturday, so that helps a bit as well. Altogether the guys have done a great job and I think we got the maximum, actually, from what we could do today.

Q: (Andrew Frankel - Forza).
Mark, with all the hoopla, all the sponsors, everybody here, do you sleep just as well, starting tomorrow from pole position? Are you a bit twitchy, nervous or whatever?

Mark Webber:
That's F1 around here. It is unique, it is a special event. In some cases I used to like Magny Cours because we could go there and just drive the cars and leave, but here, getting around and the people... always being close and demanding things and all that sort of stuff is not always ideal, but that's the way it is. Sponsors, they come to a lot of different races. They are great for our programme but they are not in the cockpit with me and that's why they trust in us to get the job done.

Q: (Marco Giachi- Paddock).
Michael and Nico, do you think the special device that you have in the front wing helped you get this very, very good performance, to keep the car more balanced?

Michael Schumacher:
First of all, it is obviously only available in qualifying and only if we can overtake in the race, otherwise it's not available. Monte Carlo... you almost get no effect from it. There's a very small advantage because of the nature of the track, so I don't think you see any particular advantage in this one. For sure there is some advantage - that's why we have it, otherwise we wouldn't have built it, but certainly not enough to discuss it.

Q: (Cedric Voisard - Le Figaro).
Question regarding penalties: would you say that it would be better and clearer for the public to apply penalties on site instead of at the next race?

Mark Webber:
After qualifying, I thought I had the penalty because my engineer said 'well done, great lap, de-de-de, penalty' and I thought 'shit, what for? I've done nothing.' Yeah, then I was slightly relieved to hear it wasn't me who had got the penalty. When you have an incident in a Grand Prix, that's obviously the tricky thing, because it's people's decisions after the previous race... When incidents happen I suppose that apart from fines, what else can you do? Sunday's indiscretions. How do you enforce any regulation on driver behaviour or team behaviour or whatever after that? Do you have any ideas? I don't know.

Q: (Malcolm Folley - Mail on Sunday).
Michael, with your rich history round here, can you tell us what it was like to put that lap together today. The world watches this qualifying session perhaps more so than anywhere else; it was the ideal time to remind everybody that you still do have it.

Michael Schumacher:
You have probably already put my answer into your question. Monaco, being so special... we call it a bit more of a driver track than some other tracks we run on through the year, but particularly because of the prestigious atmosphere and what it all means to us, it is super-fantastic if you manage to do such a lap. I knew that I was on a lap but then you can never be sure because we have seen how close and how tight today qualifying has been and I just managed to get it together perfectly, because everything was prepared and that is the nature of F1. It is very tricky these days and it's not always possible to have everything together at all times but here and now we did, and we hopefully learn more and more in order to do that more often. But reminding people that I'm still around, yup, that's a good point.

Q: (Frank Schneider - Bild).
Michael, how come that you were able to predict this pole position last week when you were in Le Mans?

Michael Schumacher:
Yip, not only did I say it on Wednesday here but I did so at Le Mans as well, that's true. I sort of felt that our car could be strong here, so it wasn't out of the blue, and it wasn't just a funny comment. There was quite a bit of optimism in there but I guess that's my nature.

Q: (Kate Walker - Girl Racer).
We've had some particularly variable weather over the last three days and we were expecting a wet qualifying session; are you expecting or afraid of a wet race or do you think it's going to stay dry?

Michael Schumacher:
I'm expecting, at my pit stop, that it will start raining.

Nico Rosberg:
Local knowledge hasn't really helped the last few days. It's been very unusual, that's not the normal weather here, that in the morning we have sunshine and then in the afternoon everything goes dark. It's very strange.

Mark Webber:
I just do whatever Jenson does!

Q: (Livio Oricchio - O Estado de Sao Paul).
Michael, does a result like this - the maximum, pole position - have weight in your decision whether to continue or not in F1?

Michael Schumacher:
You imagine that just because of one result I've done at this moment I'm suddenly restarting or opening a different subject. No, that's not the case. I'm focused on what I'm doing right now. There will come a time when I will make summary of everything and then I will sit down with the team to see what we're going to do.
Q: (Rodrigo Franca - VIP Magazine).
Michael, in the first chapter of your life, when you were on pole, you had two or three cars trying to win, like Ferrari or McLaren, and now we have 10 or 12 cars potential winners here. How do you see the race tomorrow from pole position?

Michael Schumacher:
Naturally there are more contenders for winning this race than maybe there used to be in the past, that's true and that is why it's also so tight. I don't know what the time gap is between positions one and ten today but I guess it's much less than it used to be in the past. But that's how F1 has evolved and there are particular reasons for this. Being up front, I like it but being on the other side you may disagree.

Q: (Olivier de Wilde - Le Derniere Heure).
Michael, it's a pity you have this penalty, especially here. Do you think it was justified?

Michael Schumacher:
I'm not thinking about two weeks ago. I'm just thinking about the now and what will happen. That's it. I'm focused forward.