Between the lines

The F1’s official FIA Press Conferences are the traditional home of ‘for sure’, ‘the team’s done an amazing job’ and ‘we’re investigating that’, but what lies behind the platitudes? F1i reckons it has the answer…

Thursday 10 April 2015 – Drivers’ Press Conference China

Sebastian Vettel

The Question: We saw really good pace from Ferrari in Malaysia. Is this pace for real and can you continue to take the fight to Mercedes?

What Sebastian said:

SV: 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 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.

What he might have meant:

SV: No chance. I’m going to finish third. Valtteri will be fourth. Kimi, on the other hand, will start 8th and will climb to fifth by the end of the first stint. Then he’ll have a bad pit stop in which the team screws him badly, he’ll then get clipped by a backmarker on his out lap. He’ll drop to 17th and then spend the second half of the race racing back to fifth. I think I’m just going to call him Mark from now on.