Gil de Ferran Q&A

"I think it was pretty good. Obviously you want to sit on the pole and win every race, but I think it was a good start nevertheless. We knew we needed a solid result, and put it this way: it's better than the way we started last year (when Gil took the pole and finished sixth in the opener at Homestead)."



"Yes. I don't think I can ever recall feeling so bad before, actually. That was the worst condition I've been in starting a race."



"No. To be quite honest, on Friday, when I was in good shape, I had no physical problems at all related to the accidents. From that standpoint, I was in fine shape and there was no problem. But I had absolutely zero energy and I was totally exhausted from doing the race itself."



"I thought it was a great event. Aside from a couple of hiccups, it struck me as one of the best events we've ever had. The race itself was a very good race. I saw a little bit of it on TV, and obviously I saw it from where I was sitting. And from both places, it was a good race, with a little bit of everything going on. I enjoyed the circuit, except for one silly little first gear bit. Other than that, it was a fun circuit."



"There's no doubt that we have a steep learning curve there. We have to learn about the car and the equipment, which is totally different than anything we've run before. So we're still learning about set-ups and how to get the most out of the engine and the tyres and all that. It's a different animal altogether, and since I didn't test as much as I was supposed to, it was that much tougher."



"Absolutely, and that was a big part of the motivation of running that race in Phoenix. You have to find out who the strong teams and drivers are, and how they operate under race conditions."



"It was going OK. We were running a really conservative race, because it was really the first time I did a long fuel run because I missed some testing. To be honest, the race was coming to me a little bit. Obviously it wasn't to be, but I was pleased with the run we had going. I thought we could have finished in the top three. We would have liked to run the whole race from a reliability standpoint, but we got a lot out of it."



"I'm pretty busy, actually. I'm going to Brazil for a couple of days, and then I'll spend a couple days in Europe. Long Beach will be here before we know it."