A question for you all: first of all, you've obviously tested here for the first time. What difference has it made to you and what difference has it made to your teams?
Takuma Sato: As a new team, we've hardly ever tested over the last year and over the winter we were able to do some testing, but it was still very little compared to other teams. So coming here, especially after we'd just been able to shakedown the SL7 in Melbourne, and we didn't have a proper test before that, so it was very useful to come here and do the test, and obviously the tyres testing and the two specifications which was a real surprise during the race in Melbourne, so it was good to learn more, and also from a purely driving point of view, it's great training. I drove one and a half days in this extreme temperature. I was happy with the result so I think we are a lot happier than they were before.
Nelson Piquet Jnr: It was a good experience. Unfortunately I didn't get to drive a lot because we had a number of issues with the car so I did about 30 laps. I would have liked to have done a little bit more. But I think the team learned a lot throughout the week and the car got better. I did some good laps at the end on the Friday, and the team just improved. It was the hottest test that we've had during the year, including Bahrain and I think we had good information, and it was a good test. We learned quite a lot for the race.
Nico Rosberg: Yeah, I thought it was a very nice experience to test out here, because it gets a bit boring to always test on the same tracks in Spain and I really like this track, so I thought it was great. And to get in these temperatures was good for the team and everything. I think it was also good from a physical point of view to get a few days in. I was lucky that it rained, so I got an extra day, which I was quite happy about. So it was very good.
Nick Heidfeld: It was a good test. I think our testing went quite well for our test for the first time, but unfortunately we were delayed after I had to use the fire extinguisher, but otherwise it went quite well and smoothly. We were a bit unlucky with the weather, but I think it's good for our team to try out parts, especially with the gearbox. After the (Melbourne) race we had some problems on Robert's car, but we had some new parts and it seems they were successful.
David Coulthard: I think it's funny to hear Nico saying that testing somewhere else is nice because it gets a bit boring even though he's only been in Formula One for a couple of years. Imagine how I feel! It was great to be somewhere different and this season we have the luxury to test at Spa as well, which is going to be fantastic. The others have said just about everything is true from tyres and testing point of view and there is nothing much I can add to that.
Good performance in Australia, were you surprised by that?
TS: I think it was a fantastic performance, a fantastic achievement for the team, really. It was a very exciting moment for us. Obviously we'd never been through to Q2 before and then straight into Q3. It was very exciting moment. It was funny because it was a kind of situation like we didn't know what we do in those situations. We'd prepared all the things even from last year, even if we knew that there would be almost no chance of needing them, but the team coped very well under huge pressure and didn't make any mistakes, and we achieved getting through P1, so it was a great Saturday and then Sunday as well. You could argue that we were a little disappointed that my actual result was of a slightly lower performance than the Saturday performance, but I think it was still a great achievement from the team. There's a lot more to come from this new car and really, we won't be knowing that we're going to duck much of the performance, so Sunday was a bit of a surprise to see the conditions change, but we are very, very happy and we hope we can carry that momentum through here.
Does testing suggesting you can carry that through?
TS: I think the test was very positive but I think Melbourne was more like… it's like anything can happen because it's the opening race and the characteristics of the circuit, weather, it can include anything, so I think it was a good performance for us and I think it helped us to get up the grid, but I think that having tested here everyone knows the benchmark and everybody has basically improved. Difficult to improve like we did in Melbourne and it's good that Silverstone or Barcelona where you have tested already. I don't expect too much from this weekend, but I hope to do a solid job and I think we can do a very similar performance to what we did in Melbourne on Sunday.
Nelson, obviously you're a test driver, but what's your role at races?
NP: I'm here to learn, to get as much as experience as I can. It's my first year in Formula One, so I need to learn to deal with everything, what the drivers are doing, what the tyres are doing, what kind of situations happen… things that you learn with experience and time, that's how you learn it. I'm the third driver and if anything happens, I'm prepared to be ready to drive.
And are your expectations for the team this year?
NP: I don't think the team had the start that we wanted, coming from winning the championship last year, we were expecting to be in front, of course. But changing the tyres, we didn't know what was going to happen and the team could not build the car until late in the year, so when I first drove the car, the tyres didn't seem to be that different, but afterwards the team has evolved, quite a bit, but we didn't step up quite as much as we hoped to. I don't think we're far back, we just need to get better and slowly by slowly we should achieve it. It's not going to happen from night to day, it's going to take us a couple of races to get back onto the pace and get our results back.
