Kimi Quotes after Monaco Grand Pric
"To finish first and second is what we wanted, a very good result for the whole team. Obviously right now I’m not very happy, because second place is not what I was looking for, but that’s how it goes. When you have done most of the hard work and you finish second it’s not bad, but we expected a bit more. When I came out after the pit stop I got stuck behind lapped cars and that was not ideal, but this was out of my control. At the next track in Canada the layout is completely different from here: it’s hard to predict what will happen, but let’s see.”
Kimi at the Monaco Winners Conference - Podium Interview
(Conducted by Nico Rosberg)
PODIUM INTERVIEWS
(Conducted by Nico Rosberg)
Q: Congrats. Kimi, I think it’s fair to say the whole F1 community would have been very happy as well to see you get that win today. What are your thoughts? You lost it during the pit stops of course, what are you thoughts on that?
Kimi: It’s hard to say really. Obviously it’s still second place, but it doesn’t feel awful good but this is how it goes sometimes and we go for the next race and try to do better but it’s one of those days that you wish you get a bit more.
PRESS CONFERENCE
Q: Kimi, coming to you, obviously you lost the race in the pit stops. The normal wisdom in Monaco is that when you’re leading you’re not the first one to make a move. But just before you made your stop we heard a radio message exchange with your engineer in which you were asking about pitting. So to be clear, were you asking for the stop or did they call it?
KR: No, I was called in and that’s about it.
Q: How do you feel about the first one to move?
KR: I don’t know, obviously it didn’t work out very well for me. But apart from that, I have no idea. I mean… that’s about as much as I can say about it right now. I got the bad end of the story today. I mean it’s still second place but obviously it doesn’t count a lot in my books at least.
QUESTIONS FROM THE FLOOR
Q: (Viktor Bognar – Magyarszo) Kimi, do you think it would have been possible to cover Sebastian if you are stopping later?
KR: I don’t know. Obviously, this is what we got today. The end results. And obviously for the team it’s a great result. Who knows? This is really the end, we can say ‘if’ as much as we want but it doesn’t change anything.
Q: (Andrew Benson – BBC Sport) Kimi, when you pitted you came out behind some traffic and Bottas was also behind Sainz at the time. Have you had an explanation as to why they pitted you at that point?
KR: I don’t know. Obviously, I have just finished the race. I have no idea. Obviously they have reasons for whatever we did do. It doesn’t matter here or any other race. It’s not up to me to answer that.
Q: (Ben Anderson – Autosport) Kimi, in the first stint, you seemed to have really strong pace in the early part and then from about lap 20 your pace dropped off quite substantially. Was there an explanation for that? Were you struggling with something in the car?
KR: Not really. I think the worst place was when we had lapped cars and got stuck behind them on quite a few laps but apart from that the car was behaving well. Not really having any issues. I think we had to take it a little bit easier here and there but nothing to complain really. The most lap time we lost behind the lapped traffic but that’s about it.
Q: (Peter Farkas – Auto Motor) To Kimi
Obviously now it seems that Mercedes is sometimes very quick but at other tracks they have serious problems. Of course it’s early in the championship but do you think this consistency of the Ferrari car can really win you the championship this year?
KR: It’s quite an early part of the year so we’ll see. It’s very hard to know what happens in the future but we will keep trying and try to make the best out of every weekend and just do what we can do. We cannot control what the others will do but no, I’m sure everybody will have some difficult weekends during the year. We will try to minimise those. When you have a hard time, try to make the best out of it.
Q: (Silvia Arias – Parabrisas) Kimi, talking about lapping cars, do you think the blue flag for Button came out a little bit too... not at the right moment? The blue flag which signals to let you past immediately?
KR: I don’t know. There are obviously rules and I’m pretty sure I was – I don’t know if it was one second or one and a half seconds but I was pretty close in the hairpin and I was told that I have to be longer inside their time, so it was not enough to be once, it was something that I’d never hard before but anyhow that’s what happened and it cost a bit but that’s how it is.
Q: (Stuart Codling - F1 Racing) Kimi, given that your team will have known that when you pitted you would emerge in the vicinity of traffic, with those two slower cars ahead, do you feel that you could have gone quicker in those laps, before your pit stop, had you known this?
KR: I don’t know. We tried to figure out something that is impossible to know right now, at least from my side. No, obviously it wasn’t ideal to end up behind a lapped car and obviously it is something that definitely doesn’t help but the end result is what it is but we have to see. We just finished the race and I only know what happened and that’s it. Obviously I got second place but yeah, for the team good but not for myself, not so great.
Q: (Marco Giachi – Paddock) Kimi, as a driver, could you reject the instructions? From a technical point of view, did you have enough information to decide by yourself or are you 100 percent in the hands of the engineers?
KR: Obviously I can stop the car if I want! I’m driving it. We have a team, we work as a team and if you start... if you don’t believe what you’ve been told or how we work then it will get very complicated sometimes because we always try to work as best as we can and today, as a team, we won it one-two, that happened, but as for myself it could have been better, but like I said, we just finished the race and who knows? We will talk about it and I guess there are some reasons for everything that happens in life but we will see. As a driver, I can obviously do what I want but that’s not how we work as a team. Simple as that.
Q: (Ben Anderson – Autosport) Kimi, when you look back at a race, do you feel that you were just unlucky with traffic and the way things fell or do you think Ferrari’s strategy just cost you the victory?
KR: I don’t know. Like I said, I haven’t seen... I only know what happened when I was in the car but I haven’t seen the bigger picture. I only know that we came second, Seb won, the team got one-two, obviously great for the team, but the rest... Until we have our meeting then obviously you can see all the graphs, I don’t know.
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