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British GP: post-qualifying press conference

NEWS STORY
09/07/2005

A fantastic pole, Fernando, and fastest in every sector.
Fernando Alonso: Yes, it was really good, a little bit unexpected, this pole position. The car felt much better this morning than yesterday. The team did an incredible job last night, with some different changes that we did and the car felt quite quick straight away this morning. So I was P1 in the last session, P4, so I think we went into qualifying very confident. Probably not that confident enough to get the pole, but this is a very good result for us.

Coming off a great result, Renault's home Grand Prix in France, but this is in some way this is another home race for you. Talk about the atmosphere here and coming to Silverstone leading the championship as you are.
FA: It is fantastic, obviously. I think 70 percent of the team is English so I think this is also the home Grand Prix here at Silverstone for all the guys. It is a really interesting Grand Prix fore everyone in the team. Always when we are here, the drivers and the members of the team work together in the factory two days before the Grand Prix, so I think the atmosphere was fantastic. We are leading both championships and the weekend has started in a good way so far as well.

And your thoughts on the race tomorrow? Strategy? Obviously, Kimi may be on a different fuel load?
FA: Yeah, I think we will have different strategies, all the teams. I think they will be more similar here than in Magny-Cours, where we saw teams doing very different strategies. Anyway, the race is always very long. Hopefully it will stay constant and dry in the second half of the race, but I am really confident. Fore sure, what happened to Kimi is not fair that there will be again problems for him but we have to do our maximum as we did in qualifying and so far we have the pole.

Kimi, for the second consecutive race you have to take an engine change and a ten place penalty on the grid.
Kimi Raikkonen: It is not the ideal situation again, but there is nothing I can do. I can just drive as quickly as I can and we will see tomorrow what will happen. For sure, it is not the way to try to win the championship, to take every time a ten-place penalty. We are not that quick to give so much away!

We saw in France you had a lot of fuel in the first stint, you picked up some places when they all came into the pits. What is it going to be like tomorrow?
KR: We will see what happens tomorrow. It depends what happens at the front. If the front people disappear as quickly as they did in France I think we will not have a strong position, but I don't know what they are doing. The car was pretty good today, so lets wait and see.

Given the set-up for qualifying, your lap looked pretty good.
KR: Yeah, the quick corners are not bad but the biggest problem was that what happened to us happened in the last practice and then we didn't put the new tyres on so it was difficult to know how the car would be in qualifying. At least it went pretty much okay and the car was not too bad, so it was okay.

Jenson, here we are at the British Grand Prix and you are on the front row!
Jenson Button: Yeah, it is a great feeling. We didn't quite expect it, so it's fantastic to be at the front and I think we can do some pretty good things from there.

Everyone wants to know, what do you think you can actually do. It looked to be a little bit down in the first sector there but very quick relative to the Renaults in sectors two and three.
JB: We struggled a bit through Becketts and Copse, so that is a bit of a worry for the race, but apart from that the car has been working very well, in low speed corners and the other high speed corners. It is nice to be in this position to be able to fight with the Renaults and McLarens because we have had a pretty tough time of it and it can only get better from there.

And the British crowd behind you, as they will be tomorrow?
JB: Yeah, it is great to have so many fans here. There is only one time this year I have seen a crowd like this and that was in Barcelona, so it is great to see so many fans here, not just British but from around the world, so hopefully we can put on a good show for them and I am sure we can do that.

Fernando, your thoughts on this Grand Prix in the context of some of the events that have happened in London over the last few days. Can you talk to us about Formula One's approach to this tragedy.
FA: I think we are all very sad and this is not good at all, I think, what happened in London in the last few days. All the Formula One people, we want to express our respects for the victims and their families and put a good show on for them tomorrow. The sport, especially Formula One, cannot do much on this occasion.

Press Conference

Fernando, you were not meant to be very quick here. You told us this wasn't a good circuit for you. What has made a difference?
FA: I think we are all surprised about his pole position. Well, not surprised for the pole, but surprised how good the car was this morning. Yesterday we had more or less the same balance as the test and I was not really quick, I was seventh yesterday. But last night the team did a fantastic job, we had some ideas about set-up and today the car felt much, much better straight away and now I was in the top three in qualifying, and the pole position is even better,.

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