Posted on Friday 28 Oct 2011
The Buddh International Circuit is another new venue for Pastor Maldonado but, for once, it’s new for all the other drivers as well. Here he gives us his thoughts ahead of the inaugural Indian Grand Prix.
Pastor, describe India in three words…
Great, exciting, new!
What are your experiences of the country so far?
This is my first trip here and it’s a great country. It’s a different world! I looked around New Delhi yesterday and I was lucky enough to squeeze a trip in to the Taj Mahal, which was just amazing. I have been surprised to see all of the cows on the road, but that’s part of the culture; that’s India. I’m happy that we have the opportunity to race in a country like India, it's very significant for F1.
What are your impressions of the circuit?
I’ve done a few laps on the simulator at Grove. It looks really interesting, with lots of up and down, and slow and medium-speed corners. The kerbs are quite flat as well, so we’ll be able to use them.
How difficult will the dust make car set-up?
It’s going to be difficult, but it’s going to be the same for everybody. We have to predict how much the track is going to clean up over the course of the weekend and factor that in. It’s going to be tricky because we have no data from previous years. It’s going to be busy, one of the busiest weekends of the year.
Are you worried about the performance of the FW33 on the hard tyre?
It’s true that this is not the best combination for our car because we had a few problems with the hard tyre earlier in the year. But we understand a bit more about them now and tyre performance varies from track-to-track, so I’m more confident that we’ll do a better job with them this weekend.
How many pitstops do you expect on Sunday?
Until we’ve run on the track tomorrow, it’s difficult to say. We need to do a few long runs to see how the tyres perform with high fuel before we make any decisions. Having two DRS zones will be interesting and we’ll have to learn how to maximise our performance there.
How competitive will the FW33 be?
We’re introducing our final upgrade of the year at this race and we hope it will improve the performance of the car. The aim is still to fight for some more points and there are still three races to go.
Finally, can you give us your thoughts on the terrible accidents involving Dan Wheldon and Marco Simoncelli over the past couple of weeks?
We have Ernesto Viso racing in IndyCar, so I follow the championship closely. Dan was very young and it was terrible news to hear of his death, as well as that of Marco in MotoGP. We know about the risks, but it's still difficult and I send my sincere condolensces to their families.
No comments:
Post a Comment