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Question :
Michael you
had to start on the dirty side of the track. How dirty
was it?
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| M.Schumacher
: It was not
very pleasant to have to try to start
from the position It felt like
we sort of started on ice and
that made obviously the situation tight into the first
corner, where Ralf naturally
tried to squeeze me from the outside, but
I was lucky being up enough
to stay late on the brakes and stay in the position,
but it was a very fair
manoeuvre from him not to do anything in the wrong
way but obviously we know each other not
to do so and that allowed me to stay
right behind Rubens and drive
home, the race we did.
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| Question :
Obviously you
were very close
to Rubens throughout the race. In that final
stint you dropped back about
three and a half seconds behind
Rubens, then put in a series of incredibly
fast laps and closed right up at the end. Was
there ever any chance you might have found
a way past right at the end?
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| M.Schumacher
: That wasn't
the intention, honestly. I just had some
fun and that was the
main reason. It wasn't a series
of laps, it was only a one-off lap and then
I slowed down again and just drove safely home. |
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Question :
Was that what it
was, Michael, having fun?
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| M.Schumacher
:
Basically, yeah!
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| Question :
Just to wake everybody
up?
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| M.Schumacher
: Just to wake up myself
probably! |
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Question :
It was
a hell of a lap, what
was the story behind it?
|
| M.Schumacher
:
The story behind
it actually, was that at Silverstone, he
(Rubens) was behind me and
we sort of slowed down the
pace, we didn't push hard any more, and
some laps before the end, he put in
the fastest lap of the race. So I
asked 'when did you do this?' We
were in the stage of actually
slowing down, so today I
asked Ross, 'what's the fastest time?' and
he said it was 16.8s for him
(Rubens) so I thought OK, I will pay
him back! I just went for it.
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| Question :
But you had
actually dropped back
to 4.4s behind him?
|
| M.Schumacher
: We were cruising
at this time. We were just driving
safely because, as Rubens said, it's very
easy to make a mistake here,
run wide and once you run wide, I guess
you have seen it happening to
a lot of guys and it's easy to have an accident.
So we just drove home safely, didn't
force anything and that means that you
can easily go two or three seconds slower and to do
this time, I needed this sort of gap
because otherwise I wouldn't have been able to do the
time. |
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Question :
Now both
of the championships are out
of the way, do you think you might be allowed to race
one another?
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| M.Schumacher
:
It is very
clear that we want to make sure that Rubens sort of
does the job in order to get the second
position in the championship and until this, obviously,
to some degree, we are not completely open to
race because there's no point in me taking points
away from him, that's
not the intention. Let's hope that happens soon
and then we can have good fun again.
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| Question :
Michael, you said you did
the lap to wake you up; how much were you on automatic
pilot?
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| M.Schumacher
: You know sometimes
it's more difficult to do this
and you have seen me doing mistakes,
just sort of driving safely and
not 100 per cent any more because
the concentration reduces and a little more
getting off-line is enough that the car spins
and you're not concentrated and sharp enough to
catch it. This wasn't the reason for waking
up, I explained the reason before, but this time
I had a very good car. It was very
safe to drive at this
pace without problems, so it wasn't
too much of a problem,
although these laps times you
have to do, it still needs and requires
a certain effort.
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