Q & A with Sam Michael

Q. Were you satisfied with the performance of the FW32 at the Hungaroring?

Sam Michael: We are definitely making progress with the car, but we need to find a few more tenths if we are to regularly qualify in Q3.

Q. Nico made it into Q3 for the third time in four races, but he was a lot slower in Q3 than Q2. Why was that?

SM: Nico wasn't able to replicate the times he set in Q1 or Q2 mainly because he had limited grip.

Q. Sixth was Nico's best race result of the year. How impressive was his performance?

SM: Nico drove a solid race. He was on the correct tyre given the safety car situation, which was a result of him qualifying well on Saturday.

Q. In hindsight, do you regret not pitting Rubens for the option tyre when the Safety Car came out on lap 15 of the race?

SM: Not really, no. Our prime reason for not pitting Rubens when the Safety Car was deployed was to avoid doing 55 laps on the softer, Option tyre which, at that stage, we didn't think would last for that amount of time. More importantly, if we had stacked both the cars in the pitlane, Nico would have significantly lost out. The strategy we chose maximised the points we collected.

Q. What are your thoughts on how Michael Schumacher defended 10th position from Rubens during the closing stages of the race?

SM: From my perspective, Michael's move just proved to everyone how completely committed Rubens is!