01/06/2009
NEWS STORY
Sebastien Bourdais: The Monaco weekend went pretty well, bringing home a point, which is always good for morale, especially at such a prestigious race. It was a good race and I hope we can continue to move forward with this momentum, starting in Turkey. We have begun to get a better understanding of what we are doing with this car, which should allow us to get more performance out of it now. In Istanbul, we will run the car in a way which we hope will provide the key to a good step forward in terms of extracting all the potential out of our package. So far this year, it was often a case of waiting for Friday practice to see how the car would work and then establishing a set-up, but this weekend we will start with a good idea of what we want and that should see us being able to make more progress over the rest of the weekend. It's always good to arrive at a race track in these conditions.
As for the Istanbul track, it's fun to drive, even if it lacks some grip. The stand out corner is Turn 8, where you need to have a car that is stable over the bumps which characterise the corner, but Istanbul isn't just about the one turn and pure performance involves having a car that is well balanced everywhere.
Sebastien Buemi: I've raced here twice in GP2, finishing on the podium in third place last year, so I have good memories of Turkey. I like the circuit: very modern, very fast and featuring the famous Turn 8, the quadruple left-hander, which is rather special. I have always felt comfortable here, so I don't have too many worries and I hope that will be the case this year, for my first time in F1. Our car is going better and better, even if it's true that I've had three difficult weekends at the last three races: in Bahrain I was unlucky to pick up a piece of Kubica's car that got wedged in my front wing, in Spain someone drove into me and in Monaco I made a mistake. At the moment when these things happen, I find them hard to deal with, but afterwards I don't let them bother me. I tell myself I'm in Formula 1 trying to do the best I can, so there is no point in beating yourself up over what's happened. I just want to move forward and I hope that, starting with Turkey, things will improve and we can look to score points again. I think that with what we learned about the car in Monaco, we should be able to use all its potential now and Istanbul should provide a clearer picture of where we really are in the order. We definitely need to do better than at the last three races!