Barcelona was a big learning weekend for you getting used to Toro Rosso again, did you pay attention to what Red Bull did? Were you able to? With Max’s result people were going to ask you about it but were you really noticing it at the time?
I think they won the race didn’t they?! [Laughs] Yeah, Sunday night probably wasn’t the easiest night for me to reflect on things but I think sometimes it’s good to have this reflection on things. Sometimes after all these things happen you are standing on top of the mountain and you are looking at all of the things from the top and it’s a much better view from there and you start to understand many things about life and your situation in general. So this is something that I needed quite well and I think that it’s OK. I left it behind, it wasn’t me anymore, it was them who won the race and it wasn’t my team anymore at that time. Of course it wasn’t the most pleasant feeling in the world but at least I took the fastest lap away from them in the race! [Laughs]
I was going to say you did seem to settle in to the second half of that race, how much confidence does that give you going forward that you’ll quickly hit the ground running here and make some noise that you deserve another shot?
Yeah of course I will be giving my best for another shot just generally in my F1 career. I think there have been some very good results in the past for me, I think everything was going well but it sort of starts a bit from zero now since this team swap and stuff like that. So I have these remaining races. Of course it will be quite important to really get integrated in the team and the car as fast as possible and start showing really strong performances because this is the thing that will give me more opportunities and will open more doors for next year. To be honest the race on Sunday in Barcelona was generally very positive for me. Every time I was in clean air the whole thing was very under control, the car felt quite good, I felt quite confident with the tyres and the car. Every time I was in clean air we looked very competitive. We now need to start putting together clean laps on Saturday and I think the race will come.
You weren’t tempted during the race to pull a move on Daniel to un-lap yourself?
Obviously he was fighting for the podium, I could have dived in at some corners but I don't think it would be the correct thing, especially if something would go wrong. I didn’t have enough straight-line performance to pull a clean move. But of course we lost a lot to of race time, once in the beginning of the race when we had to give back positions to the Renault and Force India and then we lost a lot of time again when we put on the new soft tyre at the end of the race. So we know that there was a lot more in the pocket to play for even on that Sunday, but we knew that the pace was quite good.
