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Turkish GP: Thursday Press Conference

NEWS STORY
04/06/2009

Sebastien, your feelings so far about Formula One, having gone through a third of the season?
Sebastien Buemi: I would say that they are quite good. We had a good couple of races at the beginning of the season. The last two races didn't go the way we wanted but in the end it is always experience. We seem to be more competitive, so we are going in the right direction but we still have a lot to learn.

You or Sebastien (Bourdais) have been in the points most races. What is the potential do you feel?
SB: I think we are a little bit out of the points as if you look at it we struggle to go to Q3. We did it once and in Monaco we were really close to it, so we have a good car. But we still need to improve a bit and it is really close, two-tenths can make you stay in Q2 or even go to Q3, so we need to see what we can do to improve it and be as much as possible in the last part of the qualifying. This is the only way to be able to score points at every race.

As a Formula One driver coming in at the start of the season you haven't been here in an F1 car but you have been here in a GP2 car. What difference is there between an F1 car and a GP2 car, especially when you are coming to a circuit for the first time?
SB: I would say from the point of view when you are driving the car it is not such a big difference. Okay, you are faster, you brake later and you carry more speed into the corners. But I think it is more the way you work with the people around you. It's quite a big difference because you work with only one engineer in GP2 but when you arrive in F1 you have got so many people around you and if you want to be competitive you need to be doing a good job with all of them and I think this is the biggest difference and it is what takes a bit of time to be learnt.

Is that confusing in a way? You don't seem to have had a problem with that.
SB: No, but I think you see there is some potential there and there and in the end when you want to do the lap time you just need to use everything. After the race it is always ‘there I could have been better and there as well.' I think this is experience, just to be able to take everything together and then to put it in the qualifying as this is where it counts.

Robert, you have the double diffuser here. What are you expecting?
Robert Kubica: Well, I think how to be better than Monaco. I think this will be easy. Now we have to see how much gain the double diffuser will bring and how our performance will be better than in the last races. In Barcelona it was not so bad. Unfortunately in two very important moments of the weekend we had two problems. But Monaco was quite difficult. I am expecting, of course, better performance but I don't know how much.

How much have you been pushing the team for the double diffuser? Are you using KERS this weekend? You seem to have so many variables to play with.
RK: No, we are not using KERS here. As we have the double diffuser we have to concentrate on it. It can have quite a big influence on the car balance and on the set-up, so we have to work as much as possible on this tomorrow and try to extract the maximum from it. We will have to see.

You are known for being quite demanding of the team.
RK: Me? No, not really. Why?

From various sources last year particularly. Do you push them hard? Do you ask for a lot of things?
RK: I don't think so. I think every driver is asking for as much as he would like to get and that's all. Everybody is pushing very hard. The driver from the driver point of view and the team from the team point of view. I think that is quite normal.

Any particular expectations this weekend? You have twice qualified fifth and finished fourth here.
RK: Yeah, if you look at last year's results it would be good to repeat them in nearly every track of the season. But we have seen already this year that it is very difficult. In the beginning of the season it was a bit easier when McLaren and Ferrari were behind us and we were behind the double diffuser group. But then we have lost the ground in the last races. We struggled quite a lot in Bahrain and in Monaco. We were not so bad in Barcelona. I think this track will fit our car better and I hope the double diffuser will bring the expected results and we will at least be able to qualify in Q3. But it is very difficult to predict, so we will have to wait and see.

Nico, this is going to be your sixtieth Grand Prix; what do you think of that?
Nico Rosberg: That's pretty cool. I didn't know. I didn't look at how many races I've done. It's quite amazing, really, to already have sixty Grands Prix. That's nice.

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