Nice to see you Seb. You’ve kept a pretty low profile over the off-season. What did you get up to and are you ready for the new campaign?
The winter was pretty quiet. Last season was a long one, with a lot of travelling, especially at the end when we had quite a few back-to-back races. We had a very strong finish last season, but it was a tough challenge, so it was important for me to enjoy some time at home doing other things – some DIY, stuff that there was never time to fix during the season. I enjoyed that. It was good to relax and chill out for a while but pretty soon I started training again, preparing for the new season and I’m very excited today because this is the first time I’ve seen the car in one piece. I’ve seen little bits, but it looks very nice seeing it all together. Now we’ll get to see if it works as expected. I’m excited to get going again, to get back in the car, start testing and then go racing. Then, we’ll finally find out where we are.
DIY? With a paint brush, hammer and nails, etc?
Err… a little bit. I don’t want to go into too many details. Just some stuff that was lying around for the whole year and I eventually got around to it.
Moving on… let’s look at the season ahead. How do you see the pecking order?
Although we have had great success, a new season is a clean sheet, with new car. It all starts again from zero; we all have the same chance. It will be another long year, with a lot of races, and a very tough challenge awaits us all. I’m looking forward to that. We’ve achieved a lot but I’m not really thinking about that, as it doesn’t give us a head start or anything. If anything it just adds to people’s expectations. But that’s the same for all of us – we expect a lot of ourselves too. So, I’m excited about it – the challenge, the racing, all of it.
Is a fourth title possible? It would be a landmark achievement.
This is what I’m talking about. Mark will start in the car next week and I’m sure he’ll start very strongly. I’ll obviously try to continue where he leaves off but it will be tough. It will be tough to beat Mark and it will also be tough to beat the other teams. There’s no guarantee. You really have to focus on every single race, every single lap and try to get everything together. As soon as you have the helmet on, you want to perform and you want to do your best.