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

Participants: Sebastian Vettel (Red Bull Racing), Mark Webber (Red Bull Racing) and Lewis Hamilton (Mercedes)

Note: the post-qualifying press conference was held on Sunday rather than the scheduled Saturday, due to qualifying been abandoned because of heavy rain and fading light at the Albert Park circuit in Melbourne, Australia.

Questions from the floor

Q: (Oleg Karpov - Klaxon)
Lewis, Jenson is more than two seconds behind. What are your thoughts about that? Is it a little confirmation for you that you did the right choice in the winter?

Lewis Hamilton:
I don't look at it like that. I think our position and how the car's behaving and how I feel in the team just confirms to me that I feel like a made a good choice. I never looked back once I made the choice and I didn't have any regrets about it. I don't know what difficulties they're having but they had a fantastic car last year so I have no doubts that they'll pick it up. Sometimes in the team, when I was there, we had rough starts but the team are very strong in putting it back together.

Q: (Jacob Polychronis - F1plus.com)
Mark, I think out of the three drivers you look the most pleased and happy. However, it obviously wasn't ideal with the preparations for qualifying, considering it's on Sunday morning. I wonder if you would explain how you readjust and how much of an inconvenience it is really?

Mark Webber:
We've been in this situation a few times, not many, but I think we had Suzuka in '04, Suzuka again in 2010, so we've had a few events where we've had the horrible situation for everybody - fans, you guys, us, teams - to have that big delay, tomorrow trying to get that gap in the weather. Yesterday, they also had to manage the problems with the lights so all in all, you've just got to take the moments as they are and deal with what's thrown at you at that period in terms of yesterday afternoon and then last night you re-group, let's say, very very quickly But then knowing you've got a big day today and coming here a lot earlier than normal for a race weekend, things have to be shuffled around a lot in terms of procedure in the garage, also driver preparation. It's really just like a Friday really, but it counts, so a short run in the morning then long runs in the afternoon but it really really counts. It's the race, you've got to put everything together for. I think the experience helps as well. I think we saw yesterday with the young guys getting their head round that sort of stuff is quite overwhelming to start with probably on a very tricky circuit as well; it caught out a lot of us out so in the end experience also counts in those conditions and this scenario.

Q: (Livio Oricchio - O Estado de Sao Paulo)
We saw in Barcelona, in similar conditions, after some laps there was a lot of graining in the tyres. What do you realistically expect from the beginning of this race, first pit stop on the fifth or sixth lap and then plus ten or 12 laps another pit stop? What can you realistically expect?

Sebastian Vettel:
I think it's unknown at this stage. What we can say is that it's surprisingly cool here today, probably cooler than we all expected but also we have to see that it's a different circuit so we have seen that all of us were struggling a lot to make the tyres last more than a lap or two in Barcelona but this is not Barcelona. It's much easier on the tyres but then again, it's still pretty tricky to make our way round so we will see. We saw a little bit on Friday when the temperatures were very different and I think tyres weren't holding up too badly but it could be all different this afternoon. I don't know what's realistic; it could be a couple of laps or it could be a couple of laps more. I think we need to go with what we have.

Mark Webber:
I think that it's a product which is very very challenging for us, no question about it. There are periods where the tyre isn't strong enough to handle the lap times a Formula One car can do, the same as in Barcelona we saw the tyres really really under incredible load, and as Seb touched on, it struggles to finish four laps in Barcelona so it's really us understanding how we can get the most out of short runs and then long runs. It's no surprise that some of the races towards the end of last year - Korea for example - that they were quite conservative on strategy and these ones are probably not going to be like that today, so we will learn more today and we will then pass the information on to Pirelli and maybe they can learn a bit more as well.

Q: (Ian Parkes - PA)
Sorry Seb, we didn't have any sound in the media centre at the start of your questions. We've got the sound back now, so would you just give us the run-through of your pole, it looked quite easy?

Sebastian Vettel:
Well then you should do it next time and I will take the day off. Definitely not easy in these conditions. I had a surprising feeling when I went out for Q3 because the circuit already looked very dry but obviously once we committed to the time schedule, there was no way back and I had two good runs, one on the inters and one on the dries, and on the dries I think I got into the groove and the car felt pretty much in balance similar to what I had on Friday, so I was happy and ready to push on the lap. Obviously it's always tricky to find the limit in these conditions, especially around the fast bit: turns 11 and 12 were still a bit wet so there was one dry line but overall pretty happy with the lap and as soon as I got confirmation that it was enough I pulled in to save the tyres.