PRESS CONFERENCE

Rio, coming to you, 23 years old, from Indonesia, one of three rookies in the field. First Formula One driver, more importantly, from Indonesia. Let’s start with that. What’s the response been like and how does it feel to be a pioneer?

Rio Haryanto: Yeah, there’s been tremendous support back home. Obviously to be able to compete in Formula One is a great thing. I’m very proud and I’m sure the whole nation are proud too to have me in Formula One.

You won races in GP2 and GP3 during your apprenticeship for this opportunity. What are your expectations for this season with Manor?

RH: I’m new to Formula One so there are a lot of things to learn. My expectation is to try to learn as quick as possible and to try to build a good relationship with the team and we’ll see how it goes in the races?

Ok, coming to another rookie, Jolyon Palmer - welcome. Twenty-five years old, GP2 champion in 2014, you’ve also waited a few years for this opportunity. What’s the best thing about now becoming a Formula One driver?

Lewis Hamilton: I don’t remember saying that, but OK…

Let’s presume you did!

LH: Cool. That’s good. I hope there is! I don’t know, I think you are always searching for perfection, always learning, always growing, both inside and outside the sport. I’m just looking forward to that journey. I don’t know what’s to come. I don’t when I’m going to be growing or more, but I guess that’s the same for every single one of us, so that’s what I’m excited about.

When you say perfection, what do you mean exactly?

LH: You’re always looking for that perfect lap; you’re always looking for the perfect race, you’re always looking to raise the bar every time you go out, because it can always be raised.

There are quite a few more variables this year due to the regulation changes. Looking at the team radio restrictions in particular, do you think that’s something that could actually play to your strengths - given that you guys are all going to be much more on your own now? Is that something that could work for you?

LH: We’re all in the same boat. Some of us will handle it better than others. I don’t particularly see there being much of be a problem. But is it good? I don’t really know but we’ll manage it the best way we can.

OK. We’ve heard from the champion, let’s hear from one of his main challengers, Sebastian Vettel, 2011 Australian Grand Prix winner, three-time polesitter here. Sebastian, you know what it takes to win in Formula One, do you and Ferrari have enough to trouble Lewis and Mercedes this year?

Sebastian Vettel: I think we have. Obviously, the question is whether we are ready in time, but we are on a good track, we are making progress, we did so last year, I think we did a step over the winter, but as I said, whether it’s big enough or not I think we need to wait for the first couple of races and see. But for sure our target is to turn things around, but going into this season I don’t think it’s a surprise when I say that Mercedes is still the favourite but, as I said, we try to become the favourites in the future.

It’s not hard to see where the problem has been, qualifying has been Ferrari’s weakness in recent times, when fighting you and Red Bull in those days and more recently Mercedes - only five poles in the last six seasons, seems astonishing really. So has the team put any particular focus on qualifying pace and unlocking that qualifying pace with this car to give you the tools you need to fight on Sunday?

SV: Well, usually qualifying pace is all about raw pace so I think by trying to make our package quicker, make our car quicker, our engine stronger, we enhance our chances also in qualifying to do well. I don't think there is a big secrete behind it - usually in qualifying, as I said, it’s all about the raw performance of the car and we know that we are still a little bit behind. We have been last year and obviously we try to be a lot closer this year, how close, I don’t know, I don’t have an answer… yet. But we have a plan; we know what we want to do; we know where we want to go, so bit by bit I hope we improve and we’ll be in a better position very soon, with more pole positions under our belt.

Daniel Ricciardo (AUS) Red Bull Racing and Lewis Hamilton (GBR) Mercedes AMG F1 in the press conference at Formula One World Championship, Rd1, Australian Grand Prix, Preparations, Albert Park, Melbourne, Australia, Thursday 17 March 2016. © Sutton Motorsport Images
QUESTIONS FROM THE FLOOR

Q: (Abhishek Takle - Mid-Day) Question to Lewis. Mercedes has ran a lot of miles in testing. From a drivers’ point of view would you have preferred to do some more performance running to feel the ultimate limit of the car?

LH: Definitely. Of course, the performance runs are always the most fun, the long runs are, kind of, long. And less exciting. But we did what we had to do and I guess we went into the testing with a goal of achieving 800km a day. We didn’t actually think we were going to do it so perhaps in hindsight we would have shifted our running. But at the end of the day it suited us perfectly.

Q: (Flavio Vanetti - Corriere della Sera) To Sebastian, could you describe what could be the point of strength of the new car in the season, and would it be a surprise if you are not as close as you expect to the Mercedes?


DR: It’s a cocktail!

SV: I think if you look up, the first thing that comes it is that it’s a name, not a pizza.

Why Margherita then?

DR: Because it’s a pizza!

SV: No, because it’s a drink! No, various reasons. We like the name. Every year we give the car a name. Last year Eva, this year Margherita. We’re happy with that.

Q: (Daniel Johnson - Daily Telegraph) A question for Seb. A lot’s been made, and people are getting quite excited about the prospect of you versus Lewis for the title and having quite different styles and characters. Lewis, obviously, has his style and uses Snapchat and things like that. I was wondering if you could describe how your… what your style is and whether looking at any of that ever tempts you to get on Snapchat or Twitter or Instagram or any of that?

SV: Up to now I haven’t understood all of the modern technologies fully so I’m sure he can give me some classes but I’m not that interested. I think everyone picks his style, and the things they like. I think we’re all different. Some people like pizza plain - like Margherita - some people like a lot of stuff on top of it. I think that’s a good summary.

Q: (Alex Popov - NTV/Match TV) For Lewis - but a little bit more of a racing question: it’s about tyre allocation. Because you never used the supersoft of Barcelona, and most of Barcelona testing you and Nico was on medium and here, your personal allocation is just one set of medium and again it’s Pirelli who chose it for the race. Then for supersoft you never train, tomorrow it’s rain forecast so for the race it will be OK?

LH: I think it will be OK. You’re right, we didn’t use the supersoft and, once again, I think once we realised how much mileage we’d done, perhaps in hindsight we may have changed it, who knows? But we’ll face it as we always do. I don’t believe they’ve changed a huge amount with the tyre so I don’t think it’s going to be a big issue for us.

LH: I agree with what they’ve said. I think this year that the whole pack looks like it’s a little bit closer but personally I think that they’ve got something up their sleeve this weekend. I think Ferrari are going to be a lot closer than they talk about, than just arriving on a low but going to deliver high.

Q: Do you welcome that?

LH: Absolutely.

Q: (Chris Lines - AP) Question for the back row: are points achievable for you this year and how soon do you think you might be in a position to challenge for points?

EG: Well, it’s very ambitious as a new team to arrive and set a target to score points but we will work very hard to achieve that. It’s definitely the way we want to go. I think initially it’s very important to keep our feet on the ground, make sure that we run smoothly during the weekend and if we accomplish that this weekend we can get out in a very happy mood. Obviously we have everything to gain so achieving points would be something extraordinary.

JP: I think for us it’s definitely a goal for us to be in the points at some point in the season. I think that if we can start off with a solid base this weekend then I think we’ve got good potential to improve over the course of the season and so definitely, we hope to be in the points.

Q: Rio, it looks like Manor have made quite a big step forward in performance from last year to this year. Is that giving the team confidence that they will be in the points regularly?

RH: Yeah, definitely. It’s a much better package that we have in comparison to last year and that’s the goal, to score points. We don’t know when but we’ll try our best every race as the races will be long and let’s see what we can do.