On the Australian Grand Prix and Rubens Barrichello’s eighth place finishing position:
It was good to get some more points on the board, but we still have a lot of work to do to improve in all areas.
On how Rubens was the only driver to use the hard tire at his second pit stop, on why he did this and whether it cost him lap time:
We discussed it as a team and took the decision together. In hindsight, however, it probably wasn’t the correct choice and we should have run the option tire.
On Nico Hulkenberg’s performance, which was truncated by a crash at the start in which he was knocked out of the race by Kamui Kobayashi on the opening lap:
Nico is a fast driver. He’s still finding his feet as this is only his first season in Formula One. He’s smart, and he knows what he has to do. I have 100 percent confidence in him delivering for the team.
On the teams experiment with a new shark fin engine cover during Friday’s practice:
We tested an extended engine cover fin but we didn’t like the results it gave during practice so we reverted back to the standard bodywork for qualifying and the race. We haven’t abandoned it; we will probably run it again at a race in the near future.
On the reliability of the FW32 cars over the weekend of the Australian Grand Prix:
We had one problem during the Saturday morning practice session on Nico’s car. Apart from that, there were no reliability issues.
On why there was more overtaking in Australia than there was in Bahrain, even when the track was dry:
I think the fact that the start of the race was wet certainly helped. There were also some cars that were out of their normal performance positions as well (like Hamilton, Webber and Alonso), which helped shake things up a bit.
On his hopes for the Malaysian Grand Prix:
We need to get both cars into the top ten in qualifying, that’s our key target.
