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Justin Wilson Q&A

Justin Wilson had something of a mixed weekend at Magny-Cours, for after qualifying second on a drying track on Friday he lost his time to a weight infringement. For qualifying proper he had to make a last minute switch to the T-car, and then just before the race had to switch back to his original car and start from the pits. That at least allowed him to adjust his strategy, but he missed out on the usual first lap fun. Nevertheless the Minardi star caught Ralph Firman in the early going, and eventually finished 14th. Next stop is Silverstone and his first British GP. Adam Cooper spoke to Justin in Magny-Cours



"Yes, it was going OK. But we had a problem in the first stint. The engine died a few times, so it allowed Ralph to get past me. It got the engineers a bit mystified. They could see that halfway down the straight, we lost power. At that point I thought it was the end of the race, but it picked up again and didn't do it again. Before that it has done it two or three times, and I was a bit concerned."



"It would have been nice to have been out there and got stuck in. I saw Jos having a go, and I was about five seconds behind, and couldn't get there in time to have a play."



"It's what we had to do. I qualified in the T-car, which became my race car, and when we had a problem with that I went back to the original. It worked out quite well because we had two options if we had wanted to forfeit the race start. With the T-car we had the option of doing a two-stop, which worked out to an identical race time to a three-stop, but we just had to see how it worked out with the traffic, and see if you could push hard."



"It was quite difficult, because we didn't have a radio again. The radio broke for the second race in a row, so I didn't know where I was or what was happening, so I kept pushing all the way through and hoped it would work out at the end of the race. It did. Jos was catching me towards the end, and he had fresher tyres, but my car was OK and we held the gap constant until he had his problem."



"It's going to be quite a busy weekend. I'm looking forward to it, really."



"I know what it's going to be like, and I know it's going to be tough. I knew before Nurburgring that the next two races would be quite tough for us - high downforce, high speed. Still, if we get the grip to hang on through Becketts and places like that, it will be good fun. That's going to be our weakest area."



"I drove the Jordan in the wet, and got 20 laps in the dry. It was a long time ago and it was a different car."



"Yes. I'm expecting a busy time. There were even people in Magny-Cours - I had a guy shout through the fence that he was an investor! It's great, they keep popping up all over the place."



"Yes, I'm driving Jonathan's sportscar, the Palmer-Jaguar. I don't know much about it, and I've never been there before, but I'll have fun up the hill."

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