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Alexander Wurz Q&A

Alexander Wurz has had a pretty poor season by any standards, although things picked up considerably at Monza. Since then he seems to have had the edge over team mate Giancarlo Fisichella, and that advantage was magnified in Malaysia when he finally got access to Benetton's so-called 'qualifying car', which hitherto has been reserved for the Italian. The result was fifth place on the grid and a good run in the race until his brakes began playing up. It was a good way for the Austrian to end his spell with Benetton, particularly on the weekend when McLaren announced his role as third driver for 2001. Adam Cooper spoke to Wurz


"After the first pit stop I got big brake problems. The pedal went very long, and I'd put all the brake balance on the rear, and I couldn't really change it. It was difficult to keep the car on the circuit."


"It was very good. I was quick out there, the car balance was not too bad, and the best set of tyres was the second set, so I could have attacked very hard, but the brakes didn't want to."


"No, I'm not giving up! It was really fun you know. We spoke before the race that we were hoping to have the same strategy so that we were having a real race against each other, not just on the times, and it worked out like this. It was fine."


"It was a very good chance to score points. For this weekend it was very frustrating not to score points, for the whole year it's OK, because how the season ended - the last third of the year - was quite good for me. I always outperformed my team mate. So I was quite happy, more than in the middle of the season."


"It's like this: I know that for the last three races I've done a very good job for myself, I feel very comfortable, and I just go for it. In these last races I didn't have the qualifying car, and I still outqualified my team mate by about 0.3s. But here it was about 0.7s, because in addition to this I had the qualifying car, which is worth about 0.3s overall. Take that away for the whole year and we are about half and half."


"Because they thought it's not good, Giancarlo and Flavio, so they said we don't use it. And I didn't hesitate to take it!"


"It's lighter, so the weight is lower."


"Yeah, I mean I had to wait for an awful long time. The contract was signed many weeks ago. As they said in the press conference, they just waited for the other drivers who they had contacts with or good relationships with to place them. The intention was that there would be one test driver, because they can't have two - there's just a programme for one."


"Now it's probably the wrong time to ask me. In Melbourne it will be very tough, I know."


"I've been here for four years, they gave me my chance in F1, and I have a special relationship with them. But life is about moving on, and we were not married or engaged! We had a good working relationship, and with a few people a bit more than this, but I'm not going to break it up. It's just that I'm going to work in a different environment, it's going to be different there, new people to work with. In the future we'll see how may friends I have here or not."

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