We're better prepared than we were at Silverstone - Petrov
Lotus Renault F1 Team driver Vitaly Petrov is very much looking forward to this weekend's German Grand Prix. After the race at Silverstone, the Russian travelled to Sochi to promote F1 in his home country, but now he's totally focussed on the challenge ahead.
Vitaly round ten of the 2011 season. How are you feeling going into the German Grand Prix? "I am feeling pretty good. Obviously we didn’t have a fantastic weekend in Silverstone. Anyway we have analysed things to look at what went wrong. Now we are happy that we came back on the normal throttle map, so we are looking forward and, with some small updates, I am confident we will have a good weekend."
Since we last saw you, you’ve been in Sochi, Russia promoting Formula One. Tell us about your experience there? "Oh it was really great fun, a lot of fans followed me and they really like motorsports (over there). They really enjoyed that weekend and what we did there. It was very hot and sunny, we burned a lot of tyres! So I hope the fans stay positive and were happy with what we did last weekend."
As you said, there were a lot of fans for you there in Sochi - is there a particular interest of yours to be able to show your sport to your own compatriots? "Of course I love coming to Russia to show the people what Formula One is. A lot of people don’t have the opportunity to go to a Formula One event because it is quite expensive, and now finally Formula One will be coming to Russia in 2014. With the one-off event at the weekend, it showed the crowd what a real Formula One car is."
And focusing on this weekend, how do you expect the car to perform? "We hope it will be much better than it was at Silverstone. The forecast said the weather conditions will be tricky, but anyway this time I think we are better prepared than we were at Silverstone."
Does the German Grand Prix present different challenges because one year it’s in Hockenheim and next year it’s Nurburgring. Is it difficult to get used to this track? "Absolutely no, for me I did some races here in GP2. I have a quite good results so I am looking forward to with a Formula One car here."
Source Renault
