Cristiano da Matta Q&A

"I never hope that more people would drop out, but with the performance we had in the practice sessions, I thought we were going to have a slightly better pace. And we didn't. So I was expecting a little bit more for the race."



"We had a very aggressive tyre choice. We were running the option [the soft tyre], and I know most of the Michelin teams were running the prime [the harder compound]."



"I think our option tyre and an aggressive strategy to stop really early was a combination that we should try to follow, and we did the correct thing. But it was still not as good as we expected."



"On the first lap I was on a move to try to pass [David] Coulthard. He started to back off and it caught me by surprise a little bit, and I locked the rear wheels trying not to hit him. It was not his fault."



"Exactly. Two races where I had a good start and a good first corner and I gave everything away afterwards. That's more than enough!"



"After that I recovered a position from Massa, and then I made a few pit stop gains. I was just running by myself a lot. The car was not handling as well as it had in the practice sessions, although we had the same set-up and everything. I was quite happy with the balance throughout the weekend, but in the race it didn't handle very well."



"Yes, but we were expecting that already from the off-season testing. It's a good job that the team was able to achieve this. We just have to work on the performance."



"We know there are many areas where we can make gains, not only one or two."



"No. Here we were very light in qualifying, and also on soft tyres. But I think 10th in Malaysia was a very good qualifying lap. Here we were stronger because we were lighter, and also we had softer tyres compared to most of the people."



"The car we had here was the same as in Malaysia, but for Imola we have quite a few modifications, and I hope this is already a little bit better. I am going to drive with this package in Barcelona and Paul Ricard, and clearly we should gain a few tenths."



"A lot of small modifications, not big ones. To look at the car you shouldn't see anything visually different."



"I think the track was very good and it also provided some good racing. There was some passing going on, but just for us it was not a good weekend. I'm always keen to go to different tracks. We test 20 times per year in Barcelona, Paul Ricard, Jerez and Valencia, so it's good to see new ones!"