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French GP: Post Race press conference

NEWS STORY
22/06/2008

Congratulations Felipe with a win from the front row. Kimi led early on until his problem but you were a conclusive winner by the end.
Felipe Massa: It was fantastic, I did not expect that. Sometimes you need a little bit of luck and today I had a little bit of luck with what happened to Kimi and his exhaust. Fortunately he could finish the race, but it was, for sure, a good present. I was already quite comfortable in the second position as he had a very quick pace and I am sure it would have been very difficult for me to pass him. It was a great race and we showed our performance here. For sure, we don't know the performance from our competitors because they were a little bit behind. But I think we are in the right direction. The team did a fantastic job – all the suppliers, Shell especially, because all the time we need to bring good fuel and good lubricants as well, so it was a great job from everybody. I am very happy because now we are a lot more in the championship. We still need to work a lot but we are in the right direction.

It did start to rain towards the end. Tell us about the track conditions.
FM: It was very difficult over there because sometimes there were some drops and you could feel straight away that the track was not the same anymore, so I was always slowing even more than I needed because I had a very good gap, so I was not risking anything. At the end of the race it was not raining very heavily, so anyway it was a good drive and a fantastic job from the team.

You said Kimi had fantastic pace but from the outside looking in, it looked like you had a couple of laps in hands in terms of fuel. How do you think it might have gone?
FM: I mean I had two laps difference in terms of fuel but in two laps you cannot be three-tenths slower. I was always kind of three-tenths slower, so I saw that it was going to be difficult to beat him as you need to be a similar pace or maybe one-tenth slower. That was not the case. I saw he had a great pace and a bit better balanced car and I didn't want to risk. Even second was a great result, but first is even better.

Kimi, I guess you are delighted to score points in a race where you had a relatively serious mechanical failure on the car.
Kimi Raikkonen: Yeah, it is disappointing in the end having a good car all weekend, being on pole, leading it quite easily and then having a problem with the car. But, unfortunately, that happens sometimes. In one way we are still lucky to finish the race and get eight points as in the last couple of laps the car almost stopped a few times. I mean even though it is disappointing not to win when we should still have, I still take the eight points and it looks much better now in the championship. I am in a more confident position and it was a great result for the team, just an unlucky situation.

We could see problems with the exhaust just from the half distance. What was it like from your point of view driving the car in terms of what you felt?
KR: We just lost massive power. That was the biggest problem. Sometimes you just lost all the power and then it came back. It was slow in a straight line and especially out of low speed corners it was difficult. But luckily we went fast enough in the beginning to go away from the others and we had enough of a gap in the end but I expect a few more laps and we would not have finished second. Like I said before it is disappointing not to win but eight points is good for the championship. It is a good result for the team and everybody did their best but unfortunately things didn't go right but that happens as we have seen in races before. We still had a one-two which is great.

How bad was the problem when the rain started towards the end of the race? What was the response from the car?
KR: It was like bad traction control with no power out of the corners. It got a little bit slippery in some places but it did quite a lot of damage to the car, so it is good that we finished the race.

Jarno, Toyota's first podium since Australia 2006. You were under pressure right from the first corner to the end and the wheel banging incident with Heikki Kovalainen in the closing laps.
Jarno Trulli: It was a difficult race but it was a great result and a great weekend for the whole team. We were pushing really hard because we wanted to dedicate the podium to Ove Anderson (former Toyota team principal) who did a lot for the Toyota Motorsport team and it came at the right time to be here with all the Italian flags because tonight Italy is going to play. It was a great race, hard and tough. We had quite a good pace but obviously some other cars were still quicker than us but we managed to do a very good weekend from Friday and Saturday qualifying. We had a very good start and my pace was obviously reasonable but I had to fight really hard which is anyway what we expect.

It looked like you were in difficulty when the rain started and Heikki closed the gap. Talk us through that battle with Heikki.
JT: It is obviously difficult to judge how bad the rain is when you are in front. It is easier to be behind someone else. I was taking a bit of care as normally our car struggles a bit on the colder conditions but I managed then to get back into the right condition and after the rain stopped I did my job.

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