Question: Lewis, almost your first pole since Canada last year. Disappointment or a lot of happiness for you and McLaren that you got much closer?
Lewis Hamilton: I don‘t think we can be disappointed. As I said going into the last race, we have done a fantastic job to even be up there with the Red Bulls, so I feel very proud of the effort the guys put in, especially in getting some new parts for this weekend and just constantly moving forward. I think we can be happy with it. I would have loved to have put (the car) into P1 but these guys still have a slight edge. Clearly, we have closed the gap a little bit or so it seems here. The lap wasn’t perfect, so I will have to improve on that.
Question: So there was more to come? But at what stage did you think pole might be yours today or did you suspect Red Bull had a little bit in hand?
Lewis Hamilton: We always expected that they might have a little bit in hand especially going into their last run. You just never know. They usually tend to pull something out of the bag, which they did. They obviously picked up a bit of pace going into Q3 and going towards the end of Q3. I think, for my lap, we lost a little bit of time, just in the one corner, but I can’t be too disappointed as you can never get it that perfect.
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Question: Lewis, second on the grid. You mentioned new parts this weekend; did they arrive overnight? We saw seven boxes and a suitcase downstairs this morning, and I don’t suppose they were new overalls for you.
Lewis Hamilton: They might have been new overalls. Have you not seen the tiger effect here? Well, we had some newer components come earlier on in the weekend, so we’ve had them since Friday, so nothing new this morning. Small improvements to the car, nothing major, but it just so happens (that) we seem to be a lot closer to these guys this weekend. The update package that we thought we had here didn’t give us as much as we had hoped, so that’s a good sign, shows that there’s still more to come. I can’t really complain. I’m on the front row. I will have to see if they’ve cleaned up the oil; I heard there was a bit of an oil spill on P2 (grid position) earlier on today, so hopefully that’s cleaned up.
Question: You said yesterday that you had problems with the balance in P1; has it been progressively improving since then?
Lewis Hamilton: Yeah, I think they’ve done a great job. I’m really happy with the balance that I’ve got. Bit by bit, through each session, we’ve made just small incremental changes to the balance and I’ve been very comfortable with it. I was just saying, there was a little bit of time in my lap and afterwards I saw that there was just over a tenth (between myself and Sebastian) and that’s pretty much exactly what I had in the lap, no more, so it would have been very, very close, if I had been able to extract… it would have generally been the perfect lap if I’d managed to get that out of the car so… I’m quite happy.
Question: This is obviously your best grid (position) here, do you think it’s just going to be between yourselves and Red Bull or is it going to be Ferrari as well?
Lewis Hamilton: I think it will be very interesting to see. As Sebastian was saying, there’s going to be a bit of a difference through strategy, probably more pit stops, tyres seem to be lasting as well in this climate, but you don’t know what the weather’s going to be like tomorrow. I think, generally, you will see the fight between ourselves and the Red Bulls. They seemed to have a little bit better long run pace yesterday, so we will see how it is tomorrow. I don’t know who is behind us, is it the Ferraris? Of course, they are still in the fight and anything can happen.
Question: Lewis, as you mentioned already, the car was more or less Melbourne specification. How do you explain that you have been much closer to the Red Bulls, taking into account that the Red Bulls here were using KERS, which they didn’t obviously have in Melbourne?
Lewis Hamilton: That’s a really good question that I don’t really have a great answer for. Probably, at the last circuit, there were more medium and slower speed corners and obviously less straights, and the KERS was worth less there than it is here. I think their car, particularly, seemed to be quite good, a little bit better than ours maybe in the slower, medium… and the fast. I’m not sure, maybe we optimised it a little bit more through set-up and we were able to extract… because the package that we had in the last race had just arrived and we had to make do with it through P1, P2 and P3 and we don’t have a lot of time, so maybe we just optimised it a little bit more. As I said, we do have a couple of small things on the car that have given us more efficiency so overall it’s been all positive generally for us.
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