
Q: Carlos, a good result for Toro Rosso in Melbourne; both cars in the points, yourself eighth. How confident are you of maintaining that form going forward?
Carlos SAINZ: Yeah, I think it was a really good weekend for the team after a very tough winter. I think we were the team to only just do more laps than McLaren so it was also an extremely tough winter in Barcelona for us and to turn up to the first race and put both cars in the points, and in Q3, was a success, definitely, so it just shows that the car has a lot of potential and that we can only get better from here. Shanghai will be a bit tougher because it has a bit of a longer straight than Melbourne but I think we can be happy with the first race and we can start from there.
Q: Can you give us your thoughts on the current Renault engine and how it compares to the two-year old Ferrari that the team used last year?
CS: Well, for me it feels great because last year was very painful and all the second half of the season we were something like 15-16-17kph down on the straight compared to our direct competitors. Suddenly, to start the first race and to see yourself 7-8kph back, even six or five in some cases was really good news and something grateful to experience but definitely, as you can see, we are still one step behind the leaders in that regard, or the best engines in that regard, so I have the trust that Renault are working hard on that upgrade package coming to Canada and that can give us the extra 3,4,5 kph that can put us back in a normal, standard top speed deficit.
Q:To all three of you: there’s a lot being made about the difficulty of overtaking this season. There was maybe only a handful of passing manoeuvres in Australia. Do you think the new regulations will make attempting an overtake maybe a bit more of a braver thing; will you have to put more on the line now to pass a car and will that contribute to the spectacle of racing?
CS: I think it’s definitely a bit more difficult compared to last year but I think it’s a price that is worth paying for, having these cars which are a lot faster and these tyres that are allowing you to push a lot more. At least, myself I have been doing a lot more on the race but also if you would put one-stop races last year, I don’t think you would have seen many overtakings so I think it’s more dependent on pit stops than on the cars of this year.