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Question :
Michael, a lot
of pressure from Fernando at the end there, perhaps
it wasn't as easy as it looked.
|
| M.Schumacher
: No, certainly
not, but honestly it wasn't a surprise.
By looking and studying the sort of lap times
they were doing all weekend, I
was thinking that's going to be a tough
race, and they didn't do the times on Friday
just by luck - Jarno, for example,
and then Fernando yesterday in qualifying. So
I was expecting a very tough fight and so
it was. We have to say
that we are lucky to be here with the new car
because I think with the old car we wouldn't
have been able to make it. This new car
is something very special. It works so beautifully and
so fine. I am so much in love with this car. It's just
fantastic what they have done.
|
| Question :
There was a moment just
before your second stop when it was very
close between you and Fernando in terms
of lap time; were you
leaving a margin then, or was
that indicative of how close the race was?
|
| M.Schumacher
: I think
in terms of tyre performance
it looked like that
we had the better
beginning and then towards the end my tyres dropped
off a little bit more than theirs
so we were quicker initially, then we lost
out a little bit towards the end of the
stint. I guess that was the reason. Then
traffic was at one point
a little bit difficult. I lost quite a bit
of time in the early part but in the
end it worked out and I have to say that in the
end, the longer we were on the circuit
the better it was for our tyres
and for the car. We were then more and more consistent
and I was even able to pull away at the end. |
|
Question :
Michael, a great
win but also Kimi Raikkonen, the championship
leader out at the start. You
have 28 points to his 32.
|
| M.Schumacher
: Yeah. Obviously at
one point in the season you would have expected
a retirement. We had our
one in Brazil, no points; we
had a difficult start, not maximum points,
so everything went perfectly for them,
and so at one point you expect this
to happen. Today was the day. It's a perfect day,
in both directions, for the championship, for the new
car. Yeah, we can be very, very happy.
|
| Question :
It surely doesn't get any
better with a brand new car, does it?
|
| M.Schumacher
: That was an
almost perfect day. It would have been perfect;
obviously, if we had Rubens
in second position, but today we had a tough
competition with Fernando and that's the way it went.
|
|
Question :
You said you were almost
expecting Fernando to be that competitive here;
do you expect that elsewhere
as well?
|
| M.Schumacher
: I think we have seen that
on the tyre side we were sort of struggling
a little bit and whatever they had in particular,
the Renault team was sort of
very good on that side, so I guess that when we come
to other circuits it might be different,
but we have to find out.
|
| Question :
Do you
think you and Rubens actually touched at the first corner?
|
|
M.Schumacher
: That's a good question;
we did ask ourselves. We don't know. He thinks no,
I don't know actually, but very close because
he quite rightly pulled in
because he was slightly in front
after he braked very
late and I didn't expect him
there and then he pulled in. I was still
there so I had to go over the inside kerb a
little bit on the dirt. I slid then, and I thought,
during the slide, I was onto him
but I think he slid at the same time as well
because he was outside, so we may just have
avoided each other but it wouldn't have
been anything that would damage each other. We
just would have had a light touch, but that's the
way it has to be. It's racing and
it's competition.
|
|
Question :
Apart from that, did it
go perfectly thereafter?
|
| M.Schumacher
: Yeah, no complaints. We
were able to pull out a gap at the
beginning and although it was difficult, I think in
general we were just fast enough to win the race. |
| Question :
I thought I heard
a slight change of engine noise in the last three or
four laps.
|
| M.Schumacher
: Usually we
start to shift earlier, which may change the sound,
I don't know.
|
|
Question :
Michael said
that the first stint the longer you stayed
on the track the better it was for the tyre, for the
car. Why was it the other way round for Rubens?
How do explain such a difference? Is
it because due to the settings and
because you are looking for the optimal potential
of the new car?
|
| M.Schumacher
: I don't think
you understand exactly what I have said. I had exactly
the same sort of tendency, maybe less extreme.
The only was later in the race with more rubber on the
circuit it seemed to be less of that problem
for me at least. It is a matter of set-up as Rubens
said. You set up your car in a way that you think
it is best for the whole time and
sometimes you achieve it, and sometimes not 100 percent.
|
| Question :
Michael what
did you think when you saw Kimi's car wrecked on the
track after your first lap?
|
| M.Schumacher
: The only thing you think,
because before you were thinking from
the position he was: Where could
he finish? How many points could he get? And in
terms of the championship what could
that mean? …and at the moment you are sort
of aware that he couldn't get any points.
Today we had to simply do our job to get the maximum
number of points. |
| Question :
Michael can
you describe the battle with your
brother?
|
|
M.Schumacher
: Straight and fair,
honestly tough. He was on old tyres; I
was on fresh tyres so I obviously
had a lot of potential to overtake him. I
was expecting to overtake him at the end
of the straight, but even
with the old tyres he got a good run out of the final
corner so it was not enough to go for it. We
were very close to each other
there. Then I was a little bit surprised
that I was able to overtake him where I did.
I sort of pushed him a little
bit into a late brake into the corner as I was aiming
to overtake him at turn five,
he had to brake late to avoid that and that meant
he had a slow exit and I could out-accelerate
him. But it was a bit unfair
again because with his tyre at that stage he
had very little to fight with.
|
| Question :
Michael
at the end when you came
up against those four cars in their own battle how concerned
were you that maybe you would get caught
up in that? Especially Da
Matta and your brother were having a huge
battle, were you concerned about getting caught up in
that battle?
|
| M.Schumacher
: I was
not aware of the battle in a way that I had seen it.
I had been told on radio that
there was some sort of wheel-banging between the two
so I was supposed to be careful. But I have
to say that the two behaved very fair
and Da Matta sort of improved
his situation compared to Imola where he
wasn't so good, but here he
was fair and moved over no problems. |
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