GP Italy: FIA Thursday press conference
Q. Vitantonio, we saw you changing a lot of things in Spa during the two days before the race. Were you happier in the race itself?
VL: “More than the Friday and Saturday morning but still we kept fighting with this issue we have had since the beginning of the season of top speed. But even at Spa it was a nightmare from Friday morning until qualifying. It was better in the race but still it wasn’t working 100 per cent, so it has been another tough weekend but we came back from the race with one point, so it was a good recovery even though it wasn’t many points.”
“We lost a lot of points during the season because of this issue. We are trying to figure it out every time what is happening to the car. Many times for different reasons just in my car unluckily as the team is doing 100 per cent to understand what the problem is. But this is part of the game. We keep fighting and hopefully here we should have less issues as we had a big report after Spa and we believe we could be on top of this problem especially as here we are not sure if we use the F-duct or no F-duct, so it could be a problem less.”
Q. What are your chances here as the car was very good last year and the team was good last year?
VL: “We did another update from Spa in the car, so we believe we can be even stronger than there. The team is pushing hard with development and even here usually you don’t tend to have much development from Spa. We made quite an interesting step forward, so we believe we could be in a strong position for top 10 again but we have to wait and see tomorrow.”
Q. What are your chances of staying with the team next year? Are you looking at that or are you just looking at it race by race at the moment?
VL: “I am pretty confident with the team. We have got a good relationship going on and I am linked with them for the long time, so I don’t mind. I am not thinking of the future at the moment. I just concentrate to help the team to finish in sixth place in the Constructors’ Championship, so at the moment we are concentrated on that. I don’t feel any problem for the future but we will think about this later on.”
Q. (Livio Oricchio – O Estado de Sao Paulo) We’ve already heard Alonso’s opinion of the World Council’s findings, but what about the rest of you? What did you think?
VL: “I think the most important thing is that it’s clear for everybody that the rule is that and there are no games as in the past. Everybody did some kind of team play because it’s important for everybody to reach the goal of the championship, but it has to be done in a certain way and it’s important that everything is clear and you do it properly.”
Q. (Alan Baldwin – Reuters) I’d like to ask all the drivers, starting with Rubens as he’s been around the longest; yesterday the FIA published a calendar for next year with twenty races on it. I just wanted your thoughts about twenty races on a calendar that starts in early March and ends in late November? How’s it going to be?
VL: “I agree on every point made by all the other drivers, especially what Fernando said. It’s a good point of view. We complained about no testing because we were too long away from circuits without testing between races sometimes, so it’s much better like this, I think.”
Q. (Livio Oricchio – O Estado de Sao Paulo) Fifty percent or even more of the downforce of the cars comes from the flat bottom and the FIA will increase the test of the flexibility of the flat bottoms here. Do you think it will change the grid or the competition we’ve seen up to now?
VL: “I don’t see any problems.”