Question: Mark, fastest in Q1, fastest in Q2 and this time Sebastian didn’t beat you when it counts; pole by a tenth of a second.
Mark Webber: Yeah, that’s right. Normally it’s a good battle all the way through qualifying but Seb’s had a pretty solid run in the last while in Q3 but today I had two solid laps, obviously both of them. It’s nice to go into the second lap knowing you’re already ahead. It’s a nice situation to try and build on your second lap in that way instead of being behind. But this pole is for the team. The guys, both sides of the garage, have had about five hours sleep in the last two nights, so they’ve really worked incredibly hard. It goes to show that the effort that they’ve put into the car is now translating into lap times. It’s a sensational qualifying for both Seb and myself. Christian said to me before qualifying ‘you probably won’t get to drive a car around here like this too often, so go and enjoy it’ and I did and it was a sensational qualifying session.
Question: Mark, it’s always so close in qualifying, the battle between you and Sebastian as you said, but how special is it for you to have done what you’ve done today?
Mark Webber: As you say, it’s a good battle between both of us quite often. Obviously Seb has a very, very good record against me in qualifying, but if you looked at the numbers it’s always very, very tight, so it’s nice to just get one the other way. Nothing’s ever given to us, you have to work incredibly hard. It shows you how well the team is working collectively as a group and it’s nice when you get it all together that you get the result. Today was my day, but we have a good long race tomorrow. I’m happy with the car in a race situation. It’s a good position to be in but there are no points today. I’m looking forward to tomorrow.
Question: Mark, you seem to have really taken the battle to Sebastian this weekend. You seem to have just been ahead so often. How has that happened?
Mark Webber: I don’t know if I’ve just been ahead. I think it was a little bit more comfortable in Shanghai for me and then it turned out that Seb did a very good lap in Q3, so it was very tight between both of us throughout the whole weekend. As you know, here in Barcelona conditions can change quite a bit here and there. It’s a venue all the teams know extremely well, so you don’t want to get too complacent with your knowledge of the venue. In the end, driver and team on car number six of the garage obviously pulled everything together and today worked well for us, but it’s a sensational result for the team to again lock out the front row. Personally I’m rapped, myself, obviously ecstatic that I’ve got the pole. It puts me in a nice position for tomorrow, but it’s still a long GP and it’s one that I’m looking forward to of course. It’s always nice to get a pole. Sebastian, as I said before, has a good record against me in qualifying. It’s always very close but it’s not like he’s six or seven tenths down the road, so it was nice today to get it back my way. But it’s great for the team to have both of us up here.
Question: You do seem to be a perfectly matched pair, the two of you, almost two well-matched.
Mark Webber: Well, I don’t know if you can have it too perfect, but of course, with Sebastian’s pace and a bit of my experience then obviously I seem to be driving OK, so together we work well with the team and work on the areas that we think are going to benefit us short, medium and long term. That’s the package that we have at the moment. I’m still enjoying my driving, so that’s the good thing.
Question: Give us some idea of the bits that have been arriving and how hard the guys have been working.
Mark Webber: They’ve been working incredibly hard. People have to understand that a modern Formula One car is not like working on a road car. It’s a pretty sophisticated bit of kit, so the guys are working very, very long hours to make even small changes, which can take a while, so the guys are getting the cars as best prepared as they can, firstly on Thursday night ready for the two practice sessions and then some of the changes obviously we made overnight were pretty time consuming, so it’s not just the developments that we have here but it’s generally the case that the cars these days are quite time consuming for the mechanics at the venue. But that’s what they’re paid the big bucks for, so they are working hard. The guys at the factory are giving them great products to put on the car, so collectively everyone is doing their bit. We are not getting complacent, it’s a long championship. We know that Ferrari and McLaren are sensational outfits, so we’re not getting ahead of ourselves at all. We know that we’ve got to bury ourselves and that’s what we continue to do. We’ve now got to capitalise, in the next few races, on some nice results. No points have changed yet, after today’s session. Some points might change tomorrow, so that’s our job.
Question: Mark, how crucial is tomorrow’s race for your championship campaign?
Mark Webber: Every race is definitely important but we have seen that the 25 points is a nice thing to get on Sunday afternoon’s as it is a bit of a buffer over the other two podium spots in terms of points’ ratio, if you know what I mean. It is certainly no secret that the first four races have not gone amazing for me in terms of the two wet races that we had in Melbourne and Shanghai. Malaysia was pretty solid. It is very important. I left home the other day and said to my dogs ‘hopefully boys I will bring home quite a big chunk of points for you guys,’ so hopefully we can start tomorrow. Then we have got Monaco and we are at the track again Thursday. Bang. It is around again quickly and you can gain and lose a lot in the next eight days.
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