Maranello, 31th March 2009 - This was the first race of the championship in many years, where we haven’t gained any points, not even one. Obviously this is not the best way to start; to be honest it’s quite frustrating, but we can’t do anything about it now. We have to work to improve. Also last year things didn’t go well in Melbourne for us and then we won at Malaysia. Today, just like last year, everything can change in a second.
The whole weekend at Melbourne was very disappointing for me, it was maybe one of the worst weekends of my career. Not just didn’t we gain any points, but we didn’t even have the fastest car on the track. There are many things to do now, but I know that I can rely on a great Team working in the right direction. On Saturday morning I lost a lot of time during the free practice session, because of a problem with the car’s hydraulic system. That was a real shame. Every lap counts; these days even more, considering that we can’t have any test sessions during the season.
The best aspect of the weekend might have been the KERS; it worked really well at the start, although I couldn’t use it 100 percent, because there was not enough room. But I had a very good feeling with it. As I said before, we weren’t as competitive as we expected to be. I wasn’t surprised by the Brawn GP: we could already see during the tests how fast they are. Now they’re the favourites and we’ve got a tough competition ahead of us. Before the start of the season I said that we had to wait for a couple of races to see how things are. Now there’s Malaysia. It’s a more normal track compared to Melbourne. The championship is completely open. We’ve done just one race and even if I had preferred to start on the right foot, there are still many left. For
any predictions, we have to wait until we get back to Europe.
I’ve always liked the Sepang circuit and I’ve won there twice, the last time was last year. I like driving there. It’s very demanding, the weather conditions are tough, it’s hot like in a Finnish sauna. I don’t know how competitive we will be, because the cars have changed quite a lot compared to last year, but we’ll give it our all to win!
Maranello, March 23th 2009 - I enjoyed this winter break more than usual. I spent most of the time with my family and friends in Switzerland and Finland, but I mainly trained very hard and in a different way to be ready for a very demanding season. Amongst other things I’ve taken part in two rallies in Finland with Fiat’s Grande Punto S200: I really had a lot of fun, but it also was a good training for the upcoming races. And now it’s time to get serious.
It’s difficult making predictions, considering the many rule changes this year. Ferrari was very competitive during the tests; but we’ll do the F60’s countercheck at Melbourne, when we’ll all meet in the race with the same fuel at the same time. Only then we’ll see how strong we are and maybe we’ve got to wait for a couple of races to have a clearer situation. Albert Park is a very particular circuit, just like the city itself is very special: maybe we’ve got to wait until Malaysia to see which teams will be ahead.
As usual I can’t wait to start a new season. Putting on the helmet and racing is something worth living for. The number of tests has been limited, but I had fun anyway to work on a completely new car. It seems that a really long time has passed since the last race in Brazil, also considering all the changes of the car: it will be really interesting to see how its development will evolve. When things go well you’re having more fun, but we still haven’t raced this year, so it’s really a bit too early to say anything. We hope that everything will be the way we expect it to be. There’s a lot less of aerodynamic downforce than last year, so we’ll be slower in the fast corners, but the car will have much more grip in the slow ones, due to the slicks. Therefore the lap times haven’t changed a lot. I can confirm that I like the F60 more than last year’s car.
It’s much more fun to drive and it reminds me more of the cars I was used to some year ago. The KERS is something very interesting and easy to use: I hope that it will make overtaking easier. From the first test the whole Team was positively surprised by how well the KERS works. Everybody is expecting more overtaking now, but I think it’s still a bit too early to say what will happen and if the lower downforce will help when you’re in a slipstream. It’s always a good thing for a driver and a team to have a good start into the season, especially when we remember how the last two seasons ended as far as the Drivers’ Championship is concerned: I won with one point in 2007 and my teammate was one point short in 2008. That means that every point counts. Two years ago I won in Australia, while we had several problems last year. Our goal is to immediately gain some good points.