Question: Lewis, similar strategy to Sebastian. Second today. How do you assess this result given where you and the team were in testing about a month ago?
Lewis Hamilton: I think we can definitely take this and be very proud of ourselves. The guys did a great job coming into this weekend. Just a week or two ago we were not expecting to be anywhere near the top five, so to come sway with second… the car was reliable, it is the longest the car has ever lasted or we have been able to take it, so I think it is a great achievement from us guys. Clearly we were catching Sebastian earlier on in the race. Strategy is one that we can work on but generally we have got good pace and I am looking forward to the next race.
Question: Two talking points for you. The start with Mark (Webber) and then your floor-stay looked like it broke. Is there any concern that the plank might be damaged. You are not worried about scrutineering after the race.
Lewis Hamilton: The plank and part of the floor is massively damaged. I don’t know when it happened. It might have happened when I went off but I think it maybe happened before that. I was losing quite a lot of downforce so in the end I was just trying to nurse the car home and bring in those points as we need them for the rest of the year.
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Formula 1: Pole Sitter Sebastian Vettel Wins Australian Grand Prix
Formula 1: Australian Grand Prix - Race Results
Question: And the start with Mark?
Lewis Hamilton: The start was not particularly great. I really got a lot of wheel spin and lost quite a bit of ground to Sebastian. There was nothing I could do, just try to keep my position and fortunately with the KERS I was able to hold second and from then on it was quite a smooth race.
Question: Lewis, tell us about that floor, as we could see the damage and you weren’t certain if it was cause or effect of your off. How does it affect the handling of the car?
Lewis Hamilton: Well, when the floor… I went underneath and you can lift it up and it is flapping, so when that touches the ground it just stalls the underneath of the car and disturbs a lot of the flow. I was having some oversteer moments every now and then, some stalling through high speed corners, and under braking, particularly, the car was a little bit unstable. Maybe that was the reason, when I was braking into turn one it was on the floor, and I just locked up my left and right and went straight on. I had to bring the braking back quite a bit after that, so I am not really sure, maybe I had a bit of debris or something on the circuit, I don’t know. We will try and find out.
Question: You managed to maintain pretty much the pace for several laps then it began to drop off a bit.
Lewis Hamilton: Yeah, I think today our pace was very, very good. Everyone always says that I have a very aggressive driving style but today I proved that is not the case. I looked after my tyres even better than the guy next to me (Vettel) and I think I was able to attack. I could have gone for many more laps in the first stint. The only reason I had to pit is really because you have to try… you know, nowadays, stopping before them is always the best but if they have stopped before you, you need to stop immediately afterwards to defend and keep your position. The tyres were handling fantastic today and the tyres were great. The guys did a great job in the pit-stops. This is a great position, a great platform, for us to push on into the next races. We have upgrades coming and we have a better understanding of the car and a better understanding of the tyres and strategy.
Question: Was there a big difference between the tyres?
Lewis Hamilton: Not really. For me it was very much the same. You do find slight difference in the front tyres which has always been generally the same but I think coming here it feels almost like they have changed the tyres completely because they just behaved fantastically well. Very very similar, if not better to what I have experienced in the past. Very, very consistent and the graining was nowhere near as heavy as it was in Barcelona. But I guess we have a lot more downforce now so that contributes to that. You don’t see as many marbles on the outside of the circuit. There are some but nowhere near as bad as we saw in Barcelona.
Question: Lewis, I’m going to have to disappoint Sebastian but our source is a good one, because his team principal, Christian Horner said that they didn’t use KERS all weekend. On that basis, how impressive does that make Sebastian’s performance in that car without KERS?
Lewis Hamilton: I think it makes it very clear that they have a fantastic car as they have had for the last year and a half. They’ve had the fastest car since towards the end of 2009, and they continue to have the fastest car, but to turn it over to what we’ve done, coming from a car which was probably going to arrive here probably two seconds off the pace to being maybe a second off in qualifying, if they had KERS, and race pace being very, very similar, I think that’s probably the most impressive part for me. I think it’s very rare that you see such a big leap in performance in Formula One. I feel really privileged to be up here because we thought it was going to be quite a bad weekend and I’m back up here, back in the fight, only a few points behind the guy in front who has a much, much faster car. But we’ll close that gap, I have no doubts about that, and clearly showing from today, after our first stint, we can compete with them in the race, so get ourselves up at the front and we can give them some pressure.
Question: Lewis, was it just a dirty line that was the problem at the start, because it seemed that it ate up the whole advantage of KERS in comparison to Sebastian?
Lewis Hamilton: I don’t know. I would have to sit down and analyse it. I don’t know if it was too much. I’m sure the dirty side had an effect on that, but the guys behind me had a better start, at least, I saw Jenson had a slightly better start than me. I don’t know if it was the input that I had into it or… What I know is that when I dumped the clutch, I just got masses of wheelspin. I did make a change to the clutch settings on the way around as I was asked to, and maybe it was too aggressive, and after that I was just really trying to recover from it, so I was just wheel spinning. Fortunately I had KERS to save me, but if I hadn’t had that I would have lost position to Mark and potentially to Jenson.
Question: Lewis, we saw a lot of marbles in testing. When you were lapping people or going around backmarkers, were there less marbles in the race?
Lewis Hamilton: There definitely seemed to be slightly less marbles, yes, but by the end of the race there was still quite a lot of pick-up, maybe definitely more than what we used to have. I didn’t really do too much overtaking, to be honest, but the guys generally went off-line. It was quite dirty off-line but I don’t think there was too much pick-up.
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