German drivers Sebastian Vettel, Timo Glock, Nick Heidfeld, Adrian Sutil and Nico Rosberg, in the press conference for the German Grand Prix Thursday July 9, 2009. (Glenn Dunbar/LAT)
The media met with drivers Timo Glock, Nick Heidfeld, Nico Rosberg , Adrian Sutil and Sebastian Vettel Thursday.
Q: It has been three weeks since the last grand prix. I would like to ask all drivers what have you done and what your team has done to make you faster for this race?
Nick Heidfeld: The team obviously did quite a lot at the factory. We will have a couple of new parts here. We have a new floor or diffuser on the car. We have a new front wing and a new rear suspension. I used the three weeks quite intensively to keep up with my physical training. I visited the team once or twice and hope that we will see another step forward.
Timo Glock: Yeah, quite similar. I was quite busy. A lot of PR stuff to do. I burned some tyres at Goodwood which was quite a nice three days at Goodwood. Overall, just tried to keep my fitness level consistent for the year and hopefully we have a nice little package, an aero package, for here to fight back again for the top five.
Adrian Sutil: I have been in the UK quite a few times with my team. It is looking really well at the moment, so they are doing good steps. It is important to push them and say well done guys and more of this. I spent a lot of time there and had a weekend off last weekend which was really good. Just at home doing nothing really and trying to save my energy for this weekend. Now I am fit and feeling happy. I am feeling good.
Nico Rosberg: For me my team has really been doing a fantastic job with development. Of course we are still not there where we want to be. We want to be even further up. But still at the moment, in the last two races, we have been the third best team in general, so that is a very nice position to be in and allows us to fight for even maybe podiums very soon. I am very pleased with that at the moment. Over the break they have pushed on again like all the way through the season and we have new bits coming all the time and it is really nice to see the speed by which they bring parts and develop the car. It is great and I follow what they have been doing at the factory and give my thoughts on everything and we have some new bits again here, various new bits on the car. They should bring us another good step forward, so I am looking forward to again being third best team and maybe challenge for the podium, maybe even this weekend. We need to wait and see but we need a bit of luck obviously as the two teams ahead, which are Red Bull and Brawn, which is four cars. But with a bit of luck we could have a shot and that’s it. From my part I have been in Ibiza and the South of France. A bit of training and a bit of having a good time and relaxing.
Q: So you are going to be fast?
NR: Yes.
Q: Sebastian?
Sebastian Vettel: We do have some small bits but nothing major. I think we had a very big update at Silverstone which worked perfectly fine, so we should have a very competitive car here again. Always the Nuburgring is very famous for its conditions, so no matter how good is the prediction you never know what is going to happen. The best thing in the morning is to wake up and have a look, so we will see. There are possibly some showers this weekend but I think we do have a competitive car in dry and wet conditions, so it will be very exciting. Obviously for all of us it is our home grand prix, so we are all very excited. The time between Silverstone and here I was mainly at home preparing. It is quite nice. On the one hand you miss the testing because the part you enjoy the most is the driving but on the other hand it is also good to come back down and use the time to train a little bit more intensively as when you are always busy, always on the road, it is hard to really follow a programme. It is more or less about stabilizing where you are. But if you have a bit of time off you can use it. Other than that I turned 22 last week. That’s it.
Q: Was that a big celebration?
SV: Not big. I don’t know if you celebrate when you turn 22. It was very quiet. We had some little BBQ with the family but nothing special.
Q: Nick,obviously you have had a difficult start to the season. But do you feel the team is still making progress and pushing hard and will continue to push hard all the way until the end of the season?
NH: Well, I would not say still. I think in the first couple of races we were going downwards unfortunately but since then we started to move up slowly. It has never been as extreme as this year in Formula One that you really see when somebody brings an update. Whenever we brought an update to the car we did move forward and were able to score points in Barcelona and Istanbul. But then as soon as we had nothing on the car we tended to fall back. That’s why I have hopes for here and that we will be able to score points again. I know that there is a lot more in the pipeline for the upcoming races. Of course, it is very unlikely to move us where Red Bull and Brawn are, that’s for sure, that’s clear. But at least it would be great if we can fight for points on a regular basis.
