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Question: Sebastian, six poles in seven races. This wasn’t supposed to be Red Bull’s strongest track yet here you are again.
Sebastian Vettel: Yeah, I think we made up some ground from last year. Obviously last year we committed to a different strategy and I sacrificed qualifying. But this year I feel quite comfortable here. I had a rough start yesterday morning but the boys could fix the car in time and I had more practice in the afternoon, which is important around here. It is a tricky track with the kerbs and chicanes to understand coming from high speeds, hard braking, but I think we had a smooth qualifying and two very good runs. We were able to use first timed lap of the tyre so all in all I am very happy. It is obviously a big step. But the main task comes tomorrow. Conditions are very likely to change so we will see some rain. The question is when and how much. We will see. But P1 is the best possible position to start from.
Question: Sebastian, you have had quite a lot of pressure in the last two grands prix to hold onto the win. Are you expecting some troubles from the Ferraris tomorrow in the race.
Sebastian Vettel: Not trouble, but pressure yes, obviously. We have seen all this weekend it is pretty close. Going into this weekend we know that probably this is not our strongest circuit. We like high-speed corners. You don’t necessarily find much of them here but still we managed to have the fastest package today, to do the best job, so I think we can be very confident. The runs we had, they looked very promising. I think the pace is there in the car. Surely it is never easy and it won’t be easy tomorrow but I think like the last two races we are also ready to fight so we will see what happens tomorrow.
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F1 Standings Ahead of Canadian Grand Prix
Formula 1: Sebastian Vettel Nabs Pole For Canadian Grand Prix
Formula 1: Canadian Grand Prix - Race Line Up
Video: Nico Rosberg Fastest in First Practice While Vettel Crashes Out at Montreal
Question: Sebastian, it has been a little bit of an up-and-down practice and qualifying for you given what happened yesterday, but here you are on pole today.
Sebastian Vettel: Yes, so need to make sure it doesn’t become a habit to crash the car on Friday and be on pole on Saturday. I think the Friday bit, obviously, the target is to do many laps without damaging the car. I think the team worked very hard. Initially there was not much chance I would say, or hope, to go out again in the second session. They fixed it very quickly. Fortunately there wasn’t too much damage and we had the whole of P2 so that was very good and very important also for today. This place you really need to get into the rhythm as in the end to squeeze everything out of your car this is a rough track with the kerbs and so on. As I said it is important to have a couple of laps to find that rhythm and in qualifying we had a good feeling in Q1, Q2 and probably knew that putting things together a little bit more we can improve another bit for Q3. Still I think we saw in Q1 and Q2 we are not going around and joking so it has been very, very close. Q3 again not much. Going into this weekend we know that this is probably not our favourite race track but still we put a very strong package together. We had some new bits and it seemed to work pretty well and here we are. I think up to now we had a great weekend and did our homework. It is a bit of a shame for Mark (Webber) obviously. He was not able to run this morning, which surely it is not easy then, as I mentioned earlier, to find that rhythm straight away. But I think both of us we should have a good race tomorrow.
Question: The two Ferrari drivers have been fastest in certain sessions. Are you feeling more pressure from those two than perhaps you have from others so far this year?
Sebastian Vettel: Not really. At this stage everyone looks after himself and in qualifying you know it is between you and the car. You are fighting against the others, but first of all you try to maximise your own performance. That’s the best you can do anyway. Tomorrow is a different ballpark and very likely to rain so I am quite happy as we brought rain tyres. We are as prepared as we can be. This is always a very long race with a lot of things to happen. We have seen from the last two races in particular it will be very close so we don’t expect anything else than that. As I said for today we can be happy but tomorrow is a new day and probably a new adventure.
Question: The inevitable question about KERS particularly as your team-mate missed out a whole session this morning. How has your KERS been so far this weekend?
Sebastian Vettel: Fine, so no problems so far. It is difficult from outside to understand what is going on with us and the KERS. We know, obviously, a little bit more but as I said it is a shame. Sometimes it is no problem then all of a sudden we get caught out as happened to Mark this morning. He had to cancel the whole session of P3. We will see but so far I have been lucky this weekend. The KERS has been working and will be working tomorrow as well.
Question: How have you prepared yourselves for the possibility of rain tomorrow?
Sebastian Vettel: We brought some rain tyres and I brought a coat and an umbrella. To be honest, there’s not much more we can do now. We cannot touch the cars. If anything, we had to make our bed before qualifying, so car-wise the only things we can change now are small things and the tyres. And then we will see what happens. We will see how strong the rain will be, how long it will be and it’s also predicted to be quite windy, not very hot, but usually either heat or a lot of wind makes the circuit dry quickly so it depends. I think at the moment if you look at different weather forecasts, they all say something different, so I think the best thing is to wake up tomorrow morning, look outside and see how we are.
Question: Sebastian, Mark Webber confirmed that he didn’t have KERS in qualifying either. My question to you is that if you’re in the terrible situation that maybe you had a problem with KERS tomorrow, do you think you could win the race without KERS?
Sebastian Vettel: The thing is that if I have a problem, then I have no choice. I can’t stop and say ‘OK, recharge’ or whatever. So far this weekend, as I’ve said, I’ve had no problems and it looks as good as it can be. You never know. You can ask these two if by any chance their engine would blow up tomorrow. I think the chances are very low but you never know, so, surely, with our KERS, there’s a bigger risk than probably the Ferrari engine blowing up. Mark obviously still had a problem this afternoon. I think they could be able to fix it tonight; we will have to wait and see. At this stage I think it’s too early. It would be very difficult (to win it without KERS). Here, I think the effect of KERS is quite big, both to attack and to defend in the race situation. Yes, we have the rear wing so I think that makes a bigger difference than the KERS but still, I think you can check some of the other races. In Barcelona I had it on and off in the race and I felt more uncomfortable when it didn’t work so I would love to have it, yes.
Question: Sebastian, did you expect such a strong Ferrari, both Ferraris or are you more worried about Hamilton and McLaren?
Sebastian Vettel: I think after yesterday it was pretty clear that Ferrari is very quick around here as well but tomorrow is a long race. McLaren is right there behind us and I’m quite sure that as Fernando said, if you look at their speeds, maybe they had a different idea going into qualifying and preparing the weekend, preparing the race so we will see whether that works for them tomorrow or not. For us, we knew that it would be difficult here. I think we had a very good day today so we can be very happy but the main task is coming tomorrow and it will be a very difficult race, on top of the fact that usually here the cars are fairly close; I think with the DRS tomorrow it will be difficult to disappear. On top of that, we don’t know what the weather is doing so I think it could be quite interesting for you to watch, but surely, I agree with Fernando, it will be busy for us.
Question: Let’s suppose that the weather forecast is dry; do you expect a race like last year when you used even harder tyres than this year?
Sebastian Vettel: You’re right. I don’t think there’s anybody who can give you a guarantee on the weather. We have had the experience that it changes. If you look at the last three days, it changed a lot (to) today. Going into this weekend it was supposed to be completely wet. Today the rain has shifted and moved around, so it’s a bit unclear when there will be rain. If you look up, it doesn’t really look like a sunny day, so there will be rain, the question is how much and when? Surely, there will be some tomorrow morning. It can change quickly around here, I’m told, so I think we will have to wait and see but nevertheless we will see a very exciting Grand Prix here as usual, with different strategies. I think the tyres will be the key factor, similar to most of the places, but probably a little bit more because the conditions, the tarmac is different to other places. We’ve struggled a bit last year so I don’t expect it to be much better than last year so it will be an exciting race and surely grid position is important but it’s a long race and it will be much more important where you finish.
Question: Sebastian, on the slow down lap, you apologised again for the crash on Friday. How much had you been beating yourself up about it and why?
Sebastian Vettel: To be honest, we are here to drive the car on the limit and mistakes can happen, surely it is better when they happen on Friday than on Saturday or Sunday. It doesn’t feel nice when you come back to your garage without your car. I’ve seen that they’ve been working very hard, they had no lunch, just for me to get out again, so obviously, if you see days like today, or the races that we had, we all know what is our target and what we’re here for, but surely it’s not always easy. Naturally, I feel sorry for them because all I do is go back to my room, there’s not much I can physically do to help them. The only way to say thanks is to make sure next time I have the chance is to drive the car as quick as I can and put it in a good position.
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