Q: You have said you were almost pushed into a three stop strategy. Is that likely to happen elsewhere or is it something you can change on the car?

“It won’t happen anywhere else. Last year I had the tire blow-out here, so they were already quite worried. Coming into this weekend they thought they had fixed the problem and somehow we seemed to have the problem again. But then again in the race the tires were fine. We were sort of put on the back foot going into qualifying knowing that we were not really in the shoot for the win even if we did get pole position. I struggled on my Q3 lap to get a good time, so even with a lighter car I was not able to put it on the front row. However, going into the race I remained optimistic and so did the team and we pushed through. I think the result is the result of hard work from all the guys. They did fantastic pit stops and I think for me I probably drove the best race I have ever done.”

Q: You mentioned the tire problems that you suffered this weekend. Just how much of a fear was it for you driving round today knowing that the tire could have gone at any stage as it did in last year’s race?

“For sure it was on my mind at some stages. I was having some vibrations and I wasn’t sure whether that was the tire or whether that was a flat spot that I possibly picked up earlier on. So for sure it was in the back of my mind. I was checking the tire nearly every lap on the exit of turn eight to see if… last time it was on the exit of turn eight it delaminated and the tire exploded, so I was just making sure I kept an eye on that, so I could report to the team as quickly as possible and possibly come in. Fortunately the tires were fine but no, it was all down to safety really, that was why we were forced into that because they didn’t want to have another incident, a bit like the last race or like last year. There’s nothing worse than having a tire blow out at 200mph, so they tried to avoid that. Unfortunately, it put us on the back foot, as I said. Without a three stop perhaps we would have had a better chance of winning the race, but nevertheless, I’m very happy with second.”

Q: Did you say that you thought that that was the best race you’ve run and if so, what makes it that?

“It doesn’t particularly matter whether you win or not, it’s whether you drive at one hundred percent, it’s whether you extract the most out of the car. It’s one of those times when you end the race and you ask yourself and you ask the team, could we have done a better job? And I strongly feel we couldn’t have done a better job. The pit stops were almost perfect, if not perfect, and I think my in laps, my out laps, they were stronger than ever and I just feel my race pace is getting stronger and stronger over the year, at each race. We had a strong showing in Barcelona and even stronger here. And we overtook a Ferrari. Just another thing: my predicted race finish was fifth. It could have been a lot worst. If I had got a worse start and didn’t get away in second, then I probably would have come sixth or even worse, so with a three stop strategy that no one else had, I think, I just feel we did a fantastic job to bring it back up.”

Q: Looking at the final stage of the race – the only time you were on the same fuel weights – how much do you feel the teams are now more on an even playing field, given that your sector times were pretty much identical to each other for the last ten/fifteen laps?

“Coming into this weekend we knew that we had closed the gap, that we were going to be competitive and possibly be able to win the race. They still have a strong car but so do we, as you can see. The first two sectors were very strong. We need to figure out exactly how we can improve our last sectors because that’s where we are losing. If we didn’t have the problem in the last sector then we would be winning, so that’s something that we need to fix.”

Q: You said earlier that you could have won the race if you’d done a better job in qualifying, but isn’t that being a bit hard on yourself, given the limitations and restrictions that Bridgestone put on you?

“Yeah, I’m always hard on myself. I sat down last night and I was ticked off yesterday, I wasn’t particularly happy with the job I did and at the end of the day the team give me a car and I’ve got to go out and drive one hundred percent and I didn’t extract one hundred percent from the car. That’s why I’m always hard on myself because we’re top drivers, we should be able to do it. But it appears to be a lot harder for me or in our car to do a solid lap. It looks a lot easier for them, so that’s something we need to keep pushing. Perhaps we’ve sacrificed a bit of qualifying pace for race pace, perhaps we need to work on bringing them both up.”

Q: Going back to the question of tires, obviously we’ve got two compounds running each weekend. Was the fear of delamination equal with both compounds of tire and what does the team think it is that’s been causing that fear of delamination over the Turkish weekend?

“It was with both sets of tires but we’re not sure of the reason. Basically we need to look into it more, but they’ve taken the tires away and analyzed them and saw there was some problem with the tire, it was failing, or looking like it was going to be failing. Fortunately they made the right choice, it was the right choice at the beginning, and we made the best job that we could with them.”