Brawn GP
Question: Rubens, you have won here for Ferrari and now you have won here for Brawn. What a feeling for you.
Rubens Barrichello: It feels great. Like I said on the lap after I got the chequered flag I have no words. I mean I had a tough night. We did not know the gearbox. This or that. We did have an overtorque in Spa and there are some concerns but the gearbox is great. I think it is going to do the whole four races. I really hope. It was great to have a great start. Obviously (Heikki) Kovalainen was coming quite fast with that power button and I had to defend myself and I went wide, so it was a bit tough. But it was a great first lap and it made my race. My pace was there. My brakes were. It was pretty much like Valencia. The car was there all the time. It felt great and I have no big words for that. I just feel really good to see all this public. Obviously they are more in red than white but it still feels great.
Question: Rubens, you are the oldest man in Formula One, 37 years of age. What a rebirth of your career. What an amazing achievement.
Rubens Barrichello: It feels great. I think it is a winning year whatever happens. We have got to remember that it is not long ago we had no jobs. We did not know what is going to happen, so we are finally driving a fantastic car with a fantastic engine. The team are doing a fantastic job. I must thank them for all of their efforts. The strategy was great. It was really good. The work that we put in on Friday was fantastic to achieve this car. You can see that we both had different tyres, different strategies on tyres. But at the end of the day the car was good on both of them. So it just feels great, I am going to give my very best. It is going to be a good and a healthy fight and I am looking forward to that.
Question: Rubens, two wins in three races. That is pretty good going, isn’t it?
Rubens Barrichello: It is very good going. It is not as good as the six races that Jenson had, but it is good enough. I am really happy with all the achievement since the beginning of the year. I struggled a little bit at the beginning with the brakes but since we have changed it at Silverstone I am a lot happier with it. We had developments on the car since then and the car has become better and better. I need to put it down to the braking that my performance has become a little bit better. I am feeling good. Monza is a great track for me. We knew since before coming here that I had a good chance. It feels great. I finish the race and I have now words as I had a tough night. You are thinking all through. I didn’t know about the gearbox and this and that. I am not even thinking we are going to have to change it for the future. It is doing very well. I had no troubles whatsoever and it is just a great feeling.
Question: Looking at the races coming up, do you think the Brawns are going to be competitive at those as well?
Rubens Barrichello: I think so. I think Singapore can be quite good. It is warm weather and part of the race is at eight o’clock. It was eight pm last year, I think. It was still quite hot. The sun is not there, I think we can expect to perform quite well there. We have Suzuka that might be cold and Abu Dhabi, strangely enough, they told us it could be cold. I cannot imagine going to Abu Dhabi with the cold weather but it might happen. I think Brazil can be quite good for us as well. I think the package is good. We have been the team winning the most, but the most consistent team as well. Where we didn’t do very well we still did okay, so thanks to everyone at the factory and everyone here that we have a great car.
Question: It looks like it’s between you two (Jenson and Rubens) now, the Red Bulls are so far back. Is it possible to continue to be friends and close team-mates, exchanging information when you’ve got four races to go and you need every point possible?
Rubens Barrichello: If it is between us two, there’s that old saying that you can only win in Formula One if you’re tough. We’re both nice guys, so this is the end of it! I think the best thing in life is respect. Obviously, when we’re finding that the softer spring or the harder spring is the better thing for the car, you go to the other side of the garage and tell them that’s what you have found. But it’s an open book there. We have our meetings and we both go through the check list at the same time, live, so we both can hear. At the end of the day, the cars get very similar but that’s fine, that’s how it is.
Question: Rubens, after all the frustrating years at Ferrari when you couldn’t race your team-mate and we know what happened to you there, how much do you relish this opportunity to go head-to-head with your team-mate with the championship fully within your grasp and four races to go? What does that mean to you?
Rubens Barrichello: It means a lot. It means that I can show my true me. For many years people may ask why didn’t he leave Ferrari before, because the car was the best available and I had to overcome all the problems and I had to overcome some World Champion called Michael (Schumacher) and he was great, he was great behind the wheel. Like I said before, I think that Michael might have had more skill than I had, but if you threw both of us into a goal with a tiger I might get out alive and I’m not so sure about him. That’s life. You learn, you learn by your mistakes, you learn by everything. I didn’t say this to criticise because I had fun, I really had fun at Ferrari. It made me a better driver as well, so everything that’s happening now is because of all the times that I had in Formula One. The only thing that is more important than anything else is that you have to believe in yourself and that’s the main thing, the whole thing in life itself. It’s you waking up, thanking for the chance that you have and going for it. It’s as good as that and as I said before, for me it’s already a winning year. I went through the first of January, I went through the first of February, not knowing if I was going to be racing. I remember like it was yesterday. Jenson did the first four laps in the car and I went to ask him (about the car) and he said ‘it’s a great car.’ And I will never forget that. And I said ‘get the hell out of there, I want to drive!’ It was a great feeling and it’s a winning year already. It feels good to be challenging and fighting your team-mate.
Question: Rubens, what do you have to do to try to catch him: it’s four races, fourteen points which is quite a lot? What do you have to do and what kind of pressure do you think you can put on him?
Rubens Barrichello: Nothing more than I’m doing right now: pushing to the limit, taking everything you can, feeling good, feeling happy with the challenge and just going for it. Experience does help with all those years but as I’ve already said, if you have experience and no speed it means nothing. If you have speed, experience comes and it feels good. I don’t think I have to do anything else. We are very competitive, both of us, and we just have to go for it.
