Mark Webber Q&A
Mark Webber has been the surprise package of the season so far, and at Imola he proved that his qualifying performance in Brazil was no fluke. Of course the Jaguar strategy is leaning towards a lighter fuel load, but not by much relative to the big guys, and in Imola several other drivers stopped a lot earlier than Webber. The R4 is clearly a much better car than the awful machines Eddie Irvine and Pedro de la Rosa struggled with over the past couple of years, but the Aussie has been out of luck so far in race trim. Adam Cooper asked him for his thoughts
"Bit of a launch snag. And we also later we had a bit of a snag with the cruise in the pitlane."
"It would have been great, because we knew other people were three-stopping. It would have looked quite silly if we were the only three stoppers. The progress is clear to see. The performance is there, but now we've just got to start putting the ball through the goal on Sundays. We've got a lot of crafty things to improve on, and it doesn't come overnight. But we'll do it."
"Yeah. And they're the things you learn even more when you're up the front. In the past there was so much about performance and sort of surviving, and now we've got the hard part right, we've got to get the easy things right."
"It was very important. It was a very, very good test for us, because Imola was a horrible weekend last year for the R3. And so as a team we were happy to see the performance in practice. And even in the race we were reasonably strong when we had clear running. We just couldn't take a trick, and we haven't been able to take a trick yet in a Grand Prix."
"Last year everyone was on low fuel, and this year he went half a second quicker on his qualifying run on Friday with the same fuel level. And we went three seconds faster. That's not too bad, but we've got to work on the icing on the cake. It needs to be put on better!"
"Not really. Like I said Imola was a very good test for us, and we were very happy to come through it. Barcelona could be a bit difficult. Monaco, it's hard to day. We thought we were going to have a few problems in Brazil to be honest, but we were quite quick. We're learning as we go. I would like to stand here and tell you which track will suit us. Imola, we were really, really worried."
"Fine, I just had a bit of tissue damage. Otherwise, no problem."
"I was happy to have it on, put it that way. When I lost the car if I had a choice to have it on or off, I wanted it on! I don't particularly enjoy driving with it, and I don't know what it did. But I was very happy with the car, put it that way. It was a very big one, and we walked away."
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