|
| Max Verstappen (Toro Rosso), Kevin Magnussen (McLaren), Valtteri Bottas (Williams), Sebastian Vettel (Ferrari), Lewis Hamilton (Mercedes), Daniel Ricciardo (Red Bull Racing)
PRESS CONFERENCE
Let’s start with the defending champion. Lewis, if you’re able to successfully defend your title this year you’ll be a three-time world champion. Has that always been your career goal? Is that fair to say?
Lewis HAMILTON: I would say that I always wanted to do what Ayrton did. Ayrton was my favourite driver and I guess as a kid I always wanted to emulate him.
You won here in Australia back in 2008, the year you won your first title, but you haven’t won the race seen then, despite being on pole a couple of times. Can you talk about how important it is for you this year to start on the front foot, as opposed to last year where you were chasing for a while in the first part of the season?
LH: It’s the same. I don’t see a particular exaggerated importance [compared] to any other time. Of course you come here and you’d like to start on the right foot, but as I did want to last year, but there is a long, long way to go so it’s not the most important start of the year.
Daniel, some bittersweet memories of this race from last year, but you must feel that you’ve grown a lot as a driver since then. What’s your mindset going into this year’s Australian Grand Prix?
Daniel RICCIARDO: Excited, definitely, just to get the season going. For sure, for all of us, it’s great to have time off over Christmas but then testing starts and you get the taste for it again and you just want to go racing again. Obviously really happy to be back home here in Australia and, yeah, get another season going. A lot of confidence coming off last year, so ready to have a good one and get on track.
Based on what we saw in the winter testing, it looks like it’s going to be a battle, at least to start with, between yourselves, Ferrari and Williams. How do you see it from inside the team and how confident do you feel?
DR: Yeah, it looks pretty close within that group. We’ll see what happens on track, but it does look like the Mercs have a bit of pace again this year but for that last spot on the podium it looks pretty close between, as you said, us, Ferrari and Williams and I’m sure there’ll be a few other players coming into the mix. We’ll see everyone on track, like for like, this weekend and I think that’s what’s going to be exciting. I’ve been asked so many question [about] ‘where do you think you stand’, but testing doesn’t really show everything. I think what it did show is, yeah, Mercs are quick but other than that it’s all pretty close behind them.
Thank you for that. Sebastian, obviously you had a pretty productive test session for Ferrari. Is there a cautious optimism within the team going into this season or is that putting it too strongly?
Sebastian VETTEL: No, I think generally the atmosphere is very positive. ...Read the whole post... |
|
Kimi Räikkönen 
