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!