Track Interviews - Conducted by Mark Webber

Q: Carlos, this champagne feeling is on a bit of a roll, mate. After the tricky weekend, obviously, in Saudi Arabia with the health issue, you're bouncing back, mate. You're absolutely on fire. You must be happy with that today?
Carlos Sainz: Yeah, I had a good race, to be honest. Very happy, because it was quite tough out there with the degradation, but then suddenly the clouds came, the degradation went a lot lower, and suddenly I thought that, yeah, maybe one stop was quicker and we were on the two. I had to overtake a lot of cars out there today and, yeah, overtaking was tricky. Like always at Suzuka, you really need to nail the last chicane to get a good run into Turn 1. I could finish my moves, but it was tough out there.

Q: Yeah, good job, mate. So, running through the compound of tyres, like, how did the race, in terms of... Like you said, the track condition was moving around, but when you came back out after your last stop, did you think you could get all those moves done? You were still a bit nervous until you arrived on them?
CS: Honestly, I thought it was on, but I thought it was going to be very difficult to get back into the fourth or P3. How tricky it was to overtake the Mercedes on the second stint and how difficult it was to follow? I knew I needed a very big delta to approach Lando and Charles, and in the end, we managed. I was quick on that Hard tyre. I really liked how the Hard gave me a good feeling to push. And I could, yeah, get the moves done and get that podium.

Q: Just quickly, Sprint race around the corner in China. Different issues at that track in terms of how the car should perform. But Ferrari looks strong.
CS: I think it's going to be a tough weekend for everyone. I think going into a Sprint to a track that we haven't been in four or five years, only one hour of practice, is going to be a challenge. Might be resurfaced also, so it's going to be a good one. Yeah, let's get a couple good weeks to keep training and keep recovering, and I'll get back in China flat out.

Q: Congratulations. Good job, Carlos. Sergio, congratulations. A very, very strong afternoon. It was a tricky weekend to put together, with the qualifying and then the front row, the restart. But it looked like a pretty smooth afternoon for you. Probably not quite enough for Max today, but a brilliant podium.
Sergio Perez: Yeah, it was a good weekend for the team. First of all, I think obviously with the start, doing that restart again is always quite hard to keep the focus for such a long period of time. It worked alright. My second start was a little bit better, but just not enough to get Max. I think we paid the price a little bit because we were a little bit off balance on that first stint, which meant we couldn't keep it alive. We had to box and we were undercut by Lando. And then I had to push too much on that Medium stint. But then on the Hard stint, I was a lot more comfortable. The pace came back. But yeah, I think I suffered a bit from that first stint, a bit unbalanced.

Q: But you must be very encouraged, mate? The start of the season has gone very well for you. Lots of big points. Second in the championship now, so positive, looking forward to China.
SP: Yeah, definitely. I think we are in a good momentum. I think if you remember here last year, it was probably my worst weekend. So I think if we are strong in places like this with a lot of high-speed content, medium-speed, I think we can be strong anywhere else. And yeah, it's been a good weekend.

Q: Sergio, congratulations. Max Verstappen, here we are again after a DNF last weekend in Melbourne, but bang, straight back with a pole position and a very, very dominant victory. Congratulations. How was it out there?
Max Verstappen: Yeah, it was very, very nice. I think the critical bit was, of course, the start, to stay ahead. And after that, actually, the car just got better and better for me throughout the race. I don't know if it had to do, maybe, with the clouds coming in. But yeah, very nice. Everything just went really well. Pit stops went well. Strategy, I think, worked out well. Couldn't have been any better!

Q: Yeah, brilliant reply, mate. You must be just stoked with the team again, coming out of the blocks in a new year, in terms of it being pretty much unbeatable, obviously apart from that reliability in Melbourne, in front of the Honda fans here, as well the Japanese support for you locally is tremendous. So that must be a big feather in your cap this weekend.
MV: Yeah, no, absolutely. You know it was a little hiccup of course the last race but very happy that we are here back on top. Great fans, in front of Honda as well, I mean, it's fantastic of course to win here.

Q: Just a quick one: returning to China, haven't been there for a long time. Everyone's very excited to go back there. Sprint weekend. What are your expectations there in terms of the first Sprint of the year?
MV: Yeah, it's going to be quite hectic anyway with the Sprint weekend. But then, of course, we haven't been there for a while. So, yeah, only one practice session to really get into it again. So I think it will be quite interesting.

Press Conference

Q: Many congratulations, Max. Can we start by getting your reaction to the win and the way the race panned out for you?
MV: Yeah, I think it was a very, very good win. It took a few laps to settle in a bit with the car, but I think we made some good changes to the car before going into qualifying, which then helped, you know, today. So, yeah, basically after the first stint, some tiny adjustments were made to the car and that helped me then to feel even more comfortable and whenever I needed to go faster, I could. Whenever I needed to look after my tyres, I could. That's always a very nice feeling to have once you're driving. Medium tyres, Hard tyres... Possibly the Hard tyres felt a bit better, but overall, on both sides, I think we were very competitive.

Q: Can we talk about some of the set-up choices you made? Because at one point, your engineer, Gianpiero Lambiase, came on the radio and said, 'I don't want to say I told you so'. What was that all about?
MV: (Laughing) We had, well, not an argument, but he was like, 'are you sure you want to do this?' I'm like, 'yeah, I'm pretty sure'. Turned out to be wrong. So he was right. But in a way, it also fires me up, because I'm like, OK, well, even I'm not entirely happy with the balance now, I'll still try to be as consistent as I can be without shouting back at him. But we have a great relationship. And yeah, it works well like that.

Q: Max, it was a very dominant win. Were you surprised by the pace of the car? Because you said yesterday that you are unsure about your long run pace.
MV: Yeah, I was not happy up until basically qualifying, but then we did make some changes. And yeah, of course, I cannot go into detail what we did, but it did help today. And yeah, it made it a lot nicer to drive and a bit more under control.

Q: OK, final one for me. Just after the disappointment of Melbourne, is there a sense of relief to get back to winning ways here in Japan at Honda's home race?
MV: I mean, not a relief, it's just nice to win, and it's nice, of course, to win here in Japan. It's always an important race for us. You know, the fans, of course, we have a lot of support here, and it's great, you know, to win here in front of Honda, and basically have three cars in the points as well. So, yeah, of course, Melbourne felt like a bit of a hiccup but what we did today, that's what we want to do, and that's what we aim to do every single weekend.

Q: Alright, very well done to you. Max, thank you very much. Checo, let's come to you now. Your third second place in four races. Just how satisfying is it for you to have such a clean weekend here at Suzuka?
SP: Yeah, it started really well yesterday and today we had a good start. Unfortunately, I think we got caught out with the increase of temperature and I think with the balance, we just couldn't get on top of that in the first stint, which meant that the degradation was a little bit higher and with Lando having two sets of Hards it just compromised a little bit our race more than I wanted to. but I think already on the second stint things were a lot back under control, We were able to get a better read to the balance. And I think by the time we got to the third stint, things were a lot better.

Q: You looked very fired up in the cockpit. And what is it about you and 130R? You passed both Mercedes at the apex of the fastest corner on the lap.
SP: Yeah, it just turned out to happen both at the same time. Spending time around one of the slowest cars, given the degradation they were having, it was quite penalising. So I was just going for it. And it happened at 130R both times.

Q: Nerve-wracking?
SP: No, it's good fun. It's good fun to go around there with two cars.

Q: Checo, can we throw it forward quickly? Given the pace you and the car have had here, do you think Shanghai in a couple of weeks' time will be a similar story for Red Bull?
SP: It's a bit of a similar track, I'll say, with a lot of high-speed, medium-speed content. I think if we are able to be fast around this place, we can be fast in many other races, so it should be a good track for us as well.

Q: Very well done to you, thank you. Carlos, if we could come to you now. Very well done to you as well. Max spoke yesterday about Ferrari's long run pace looking very good. Just how confident were you coming into the race?
CS: We kind of knew our race pace was better than our qualifying pace. Still probably not enough to go for a win because obviously starting P4 and given how good the race pace of the Red Bull is, it's almost impossible to think about a win, but I was hopeful of achieving a podium that in the end we managed to achieve, even if it was a very tough race, very strategic. The track condition changed a lot through the race. We went from a very sunny track that we hadn't had all weekend to a very cloudy track. The degradation went down a lot and you could push a lot more on the tyres halfway through the race. And yeah, this changed the whole situation quite a lot. At one point, I thought the podium wasn't possible, but then with a new Hard, the pace was mega and I could get back onto the podium.

Check out our Sunday gallery from Suzuka here.