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Nicolas Kiesa Q&A

A fortnight ago Nicolas Kiesa did all the overtaking moves in what was otherwise a very processional Silverstone F3000 race. What few people outside his immediate circle knew was that the Dane had a chance to land Justin Wilson's Minardi seat, should the latter's Jaguar deal go through. It did, and Kiesa has become the first grand prix driver from his country since Jan Magnussen's troubled spell at Stewart fizzled out in 1998. Alas his first qualifying session at Hockenheim didn't get going when he ground to a half in the pit exit. He will at least have a second chance on Saturday. Adam Cooper asked Kiesa for his thoughts on his first day



"After this disappointment in the qualifying I can definitely believe it, especially when I heard that five or seven thousand Danish people came all this way to watch me race! Anyway I'll have a chance on Saturday, and I'm looking forward to it."



"I found out during the course of the Silverstone weekend, and was told not to concentrate a lot on it. On Monday I got the call from my manager Piers Hunnisett saying we could be looking at a contract."



"I don't know. Maybe Piers had, I didn't."



"I finished my race at Silverstone and I was kinda satisfied with the race I had there. I was in a new team and a new car, and I thought I had the best of it that day. I won in Monaco and I felt I had got something out of F3000. So it wasn't with a bad feeling that I left, and besides I didn't leave to go anywhere worse - I left to go to F1."



"I learned all the stuff I put into use today! I did 300kms testing, and I got to know all the electronic gadgets on the car so to speak. I knew quite a lot about how everything worked, because I've been a TV commentator for one and half years now. I've done a lot of research and asked drivers, and also I'm very interested in F1 cars technically. I pretty much knew all the theoretical stuff, I'd just never tried it."



"I got within 0.2s of Jos, and I thought that was quite good. That's why I'm a bit disappointed as well, because I had a really good basic feeling going into qualifying that I could make a good result or finish near to Jos."



"I suspect it was an anti-stall feature that I did not know how to handle."



"Under normal circumstances, very, very difficult. This time it was really serious, and the people we were working with and trying to get to invest in this knew that we had to grab this chance. There was a lot of goodwill from all these people, and we made it."



"Of course. I've got five races to prove that I'm good enough for F1. That is definitely my goal, to race here next year."



"It's a funny place, Monaco. The way I won wouldn't normally have put me directly into F1. I think there's some sort of magic round Monaco that will do it to you!"

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