Q & A with Edoardo Mortara

The runner up in the F3 Euro Series was the quickest man throughout practice, and he won the qualification race - but saw his hopes of overall victory in the big event dashed after a brush with the wall late in the race.

Although deeply disappointed with losing out on the win, Mortara was philosophical about what happened when autosport.com caught up with him for a chat.

Q. Do you think without the incident where you brushed the wall after the final safety car period, that you had the car to win?

Edoardo Mortara: I don't know. Honestly, I am disappointed today because the qualification race was different. I felt we had a strong chance to do something, and I don't know why today it was different. We were crazy fast in the mountains considering we put low downforce on to be fast on the straight, and we were faster than Keisuke by five or six tenths every lap.

It was just on the straight it was impossible to close on him. He was coming out of the last corner really well, but then incredibly for the first time this weekend he was the first guy I saw where the gap grew on the straight - even when I was in his slipstream. I think I did all I could to win this race, and I think there was no more I could do. I am just really disappointed.

Q. Do you feel that the race was decided on pure horsepower?

EM: No. At the end of the day, you see TOM'S won with a Toyota and Brendon (Hartley) is third with a Mercedes-Benz, and I am second with a Volkswagen. So you can see it is a big battle between manufacturers, and it is normal that you have some of them who have different use of power and these sorts of things. Today you have to say that they (TOM'S) had a good car and a good engine, but this is not new. We knew it before coming here, and we tried all we could to do well. Anyway it is like this. I don't think it is because I had a Volkswagen that I lost.

Q. You said after the qualification race that you were not warming the tyres up as quickly as the TOM'S, which is why it took you a few laps to get up to speed. Was it a similar characteristic today?

EM: Yes. I had to say today I also had some problems with the temperatures of the engine, because at the restart my engine had big, big problems to get speed on the straight. It was really strange. I was not feeling really great with the car like the other days. I had some problems, so I was trying to close the gap in the mountains. And I pushed really hard in the first lap to have the gap quite close - but I crashed the car. So to give you an idea of how hard I was pushing - it was 120 percent.

Q. You are obviously disappointed not to have won, but with the speed you showed in practice and the way you raced here, do you feel you have shown the world a bit more of your potential?

EM: I don't know. It is the others that have to judge my performance. I cannot judge that. I am pretty satisfied with what I did this weekend. I did a lot of best times and in qualifying we could easily do the pole position, but because of bad luck it was not possible. We won the qualification race, in the warm up we just prepared for the race and didn't take any risks and we were sixth. And during the race, I think we were faster than Keisuke in the mountains, and probably faster also in times, but we did not win. Racing is like this.

Q. What is the next step for you? What will you do next year?

EM: I was trying to win Macau, although finishing second is not so bad. So let's see now. We will see what my manager and my sponsors can do. I don't really know for the moment.