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Chinese GP: Thursday Press Conference

NEWS STORY
09/04/2015

Today's press conference with Jenson Button, Marcus Ericsson, Felipe Massa, Romain Grosjean, Nico Hulkenberg and Sebastian Vettel.

Sebastian, it must have been a few really amazing days for you and we've heard you've been back to Maranello. What's it been like to be back there as a winner and do you have to temper the enthusiasm right now?
Sebastian Vettel: No, I think we are realistic about where we are and what we want to achieve. I think the targets haven't changed. Obviously it was a great victory we had in Malaysia and great for us as a team, and especially for myself a very emotional day - my first win with Ferrari. And then to come back - I think it was Wednesday - coming back to the factory and to see all the people there was quite special. There are a lot of people working there, so you can imagine, and of course they were very, very happy. The team hasn't won for quite a while, so I think they enjoyed the fact that they had something to celebrate, there are a couple of rituals involved and it was nice for them to get that feeling again, but as I said, for the next races nothing has changed: we want to confirm that we have a strong package, we have a strong car and we want to make sure that we stay ahead of the people we stayed of in the last couple of races, but knowing that obviously Mercedes is in a very, very strong position.

We saw really good pace from Ferrari in Malaysia. Is this pace for real and continue to take the fight to Mercedes?
SV: I think it was for real two weeks ago. I don't think Mercedes backed off and everyone else. It was obviously nice for us to see that we were so competitive but I think there were also a couple of circumstances coming together but most important we managed to capitalise and get a very good result and win the race. But for here and for the next races, I think in general [at] the start of the season, things can be up and down. We want to make sure that there is quite a lot of up, not so many downs but it's normal that some races you are more competitive than others, so I think, as I said, that we managed to do a very good job in Malaysia but for here and for the next races we have to be realistic about what we want to achieve.

Thank you very much. Moving on to you Felipe, Williams haven't had the start to the year that they were hoping for. Have we seen the real pace of Williams this season or is there still a lot more to come? Can you claim you place back here in China?
Felipe Massa: Well, I think we cannot complain about how we start the season. You always want to be on top, but we are third in the championship, so we scored some good points as well, even losing some good points in the first race from Valtteri who was not there racing. But even counting that, I think it was OK. So we cannot complain [about] where we are, we always want to have more, we always want to be better, to be more competitive, and also we saw that Ferrari was pretty good. I think it was the team that made the most steps forward compared to how we finished the last race. We need to work as hard as we can to fight with them and even trying to get closer or better compared to Mercedes as well. We're working for that, we just need to keep pushing and knowing race by race where we are, but I think we cannot complain. We are not far away compared to where we finished [last season] so we are there in the fight.

The team admitted after Malaysia that there might be some operational procedures that need fine tuning, that there's still room for improvement, and there are also some new upgrades to be shown or tested here in China. What are you hoping for this weekend?
FM: I think you always have some room for improvement. You always can improve and you always need to keep working to improve the car, that's what we're doing, but it's also what the other teams are doing, to improve maybe the car, the procedures, the pit stops, the pace - everything is important for every race, Here we have some new parts but I think maybe other teams will have as well, so we need to wait and see. I hope we bring what expect to bring race by race, which is always what we are working for.

Marcus, coming to you: this year has been a step up for you coming from Caterham to Sauber. It's been a quite promising start, pre-season testing, the first race, but Malaysia was a big learning process. Has the prospect of scoring points changed your approach going into racing?
Marcus Ericsson: First of all, it's a big step up, like you say, coming from Caterham into the Sauber team. We've been competitive from the start and Australia was great for us, with both cars in the points. Then I think Malaysia was a really good weekend. I was top 10 in every session and managed to get to Q3, so it was a really great weekend and then obviously I did my mistake in the race, which I had to pay a big price for but that's something you learn from. I'm not the first one and I'm not the last one that makes a mistake in a race. But yeah, overall, I think the Malaysia weekend was very positive and we bring a lot of good stuff from that and we showed again that we can be competitive and we're going to aim to continue that form in China and I think it's realistic that we can do as well. I'm really looking forward to getting going again tomorrow.

The pecking order is beginning to take shape at the moment. Have you and Sauber set any targets for this year already?
ME: Not specific targets for championship position but I think for us it's the target for every race weekend now to try and score points and like I said, it's a realistic target with the pace we have at the moment. We need to try to score the points and also keep up with the development of the car. That's the big aim for us for now.

Thanks. Moving on to you Nico. It's been a difficult start to the season for you and also the team, with all the delays and pre-season testing. Force India seem to have slipped back in this pecking order we were talking about, so what are the challenges you are facing at the moment, especially now that the B-spec car has now been pushed back to Austria?
Nico Hulkenberg: Well, yeah, the challenge is to get a faster car, to find performance. Like you say, clearly we are not in the easiest situation and Malaysia has been particularly tough on us but I think everybody in the team is pushing really hard and there is hope. There is still room for improvement with this car before we get major upgrades, so we just keep our heads down, focus hard and try to get the most out of it.

We saw a lot of wheel-to-wheel racing in Malaysia. Do you think this something that can be repeated this weekend and which are the main challenges that everyone is going to face this weekend in terms of tyre deg or temperatures or reliability?
NH: Usually China is well know for front graining so we'll have to wait and see if that happens again this year. But Malaysia, with those high temperatures tyre deg was high and whenever tyre deg is high you have a lot of wheel-to-wheel racing. I think it was quite entertaining from that point of view. I think it's going to be a little bit more difficult here to overtake but we'll see what happens.

Moving on to you Romain: 11th in Malaysia. We saw very good qualifying pace but then Lotus seemed to struggle for pace during the race and we haven't seen a clean race from a Lotus this year, so where does Lotus stand in the pecking order?
Romain Grosjean: Well, I do think our race pace is actually better than our qualifying pace. Of course, we didn't show much in Australia and in Malaysia I think we had a good race. We didn't finish where we were supposed to, we had a few issues with the car but generally I think we could have done better than we did and on paper everything is looking in that direction, so it's very positive. We haven't put everything together right now. I'm sure that we've learned a lot and from where we come back from last year it's a massive step forward and I think we enjoy driving the car. There are updates coming and every time we put something on the car it works in a good direction so hopefully this weekend it's going to be a bit better, an easier race and from there we can start scoring points.

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