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Question: Sebastian, your first home grand prix as World Champion. What does that mean to you?
Sebastian Vettel: Well I mean generally after winning the championship last year coming here it is not that different to two years ago or last year in Hockenheim. It is always great first of all to have the opportunity to race in your home country, in front of your home crowd. We are six drivers now so we all share that feeling this weekend and I am looking forward to it. Many times people talk about extra pressure or things that could slow you down but to be honest I think it is more positive than anything else to have people in the grandstands, people outside the paddock and inside the paddock as well support you and trying to push you forward to allow you to find maybe this extra tenth or two around the lap.
Question: The results of the last three grands prix, you have been a winner, McLaren have been a winner and Ferrari have been a winner. The regulations have slightly changed as well. Are you going to find out this weekend, or is it going to be next weekend in Hungary, where the true performance is and where the true position is?
Sebastian Vettel: Well I think we have seen the true performance throughout the season so far already. We have had enough races to judge. Last weekend unfortunately we were discussing or we were talking more about rules and rule changes rather than the racing. But from here it should be clear right from the start so there is not a lot to talk about in that regard and we focus on racing again. I think it has been fairly tight all year, especially as you said especially the last three races with three different teams winning, so for here it is difficult to say who will be strongest. We are here to find out but I think we have a good chance. We seem to like the track. We had a very good race two years ago, very, very good race pace so we will see. Since then things have changed. I think we have learned a lot. At this stage everything looks fine. We are as confident as we can be and I, in particular, am looking forward to the race on Sunday.
Question: Sebastian, you and Michael are two World Champions, can you rate his seasons and, do you think that Sebastian could become the next Michael Schumacher?
Sebastian Vettel: I can rate many seasons by Michael, he did a lot of seasons and he obviously won the Championship seven times. Obviously he’s sitting next to me, so whatever I say, he can hear as well but I don’t think we have to go through all this again. You have been there for most of the time as well so I think you remember. He had very good seasons, but he also had seasons where he was in a bit of trouble and came out of it, made huge progress with the team and himself, even though he didn’t win the championship.
And on the second question - yeah, I’m not his brother, he has one already. Surely, for all of us, except Michael, we will always be compared to him and left with his big footsteps or footprints, but it will be very, very difficult to catch up. Everything he achieved is quite phenomenal, so the question is not only if there will ever be a German achieving that again, the question is if there will ever again be a driver in Formula One achieving what he has done.
Question: Sebastian, you probably won many fans with your impressions of other drivers on Top Gear (UK TV show) recently. How determined are you to do an impression of, say, Mark Webber and win at the Nurburgring here and claim your first home win?
Sebastian Vettel: I think the impression I did was about what happened in the past, so it’s a bit more difficult to predict what is going to happen in the future. I really enjoyed the show, it was great fun, not just the lap I did in the Reasonably Priced Car but also afterwards. Obviously I’ve now had two full years with Mark and am now in the third year alongside him and I still sometimes struggle to understand everything he says, whereas I get quite familiar with all the accents we have in the garage, with people from the UK, even from Ireland and I get along quite well; with Mark’s accent here and there I still struggle, so it’s not an easy one to copy either.
Question: If you’re told by your team to maintain the gap behind Mark, what do you think you will do?
Sebastian Vettel: I think it always depends on the situation in the race. Obviously I know where you’re coming from. I don’t think there was anything for us to gain as a team in the last race. Fernando was quite far away and whoever was fourth, Felipe or Lewis, they were battling, they were quite far away from us, so as a team there was nothing to gain. Surely, as Mark said, he wanted to race, he wanted to improve that one position. I didn’t want to let him by, I tried to defend. Surely, if he would have been useless in terms of if I would have had no chance any more, then there’s no point because at the end of the day he’s my team-mate, I move over and let him go. It depends, as I said, on the situation. On the one hand you want to race for yourself and on the other hand you try the best for the team. To be honest, I don’t think there’s much we have to talk through and go through again. On Sunday, obviously for that to happen, first of all we have to have a lot of good laps to then be in a position to fight against each other for the victory, so I think that stage is quite far away so I would rather start tomorrow morning with free practice one and go from there.
Question: Sebastian, why the hell do you have 80 points more than Mark Webber this year?
Sebastian Vettel: I think I’ve finished in better positions in the races so far.
Question: Sebastian, the blown diffuser is back, do you think we will have a similar situation to Valencia here or similar to Silverstone?
Sebastian Vettel: First of all, I think you need to see that Valencia and Silverstone are very, very different from each other. At Valencia, there are no really fast corners and there are hardly any slow speed corners at Silverstone - just a couple in the new layout - but the circuits are very different to each other. It’s difficult to say. Here you have a bit of both, a bit of slow speed, more than in Silverstone, and more high speed than in Valencia, so I would say right in the middle, but we need to see. At this stage, after Silverstone, it was very difficult to say OK, now because of the rule change, that’s why Ferrari was quick, that’s why - I don’t know - McLaren was maybe a little bit worse that weekend. I don’t think that was the reason. In the end, we all lost a little bit. It’s difficult to measure. Now we go back to where we have been in Valencia, so I think, generally, we didn’t change the world switching the blown exhaust or the blown diffusers on and off. As I said, the most important thing is that we focus on the racing again.
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