Monaco: Button at the Wednesday Press Conference

By Phil Huff (28/05/2003)
May 28 2003

The FIA's Wednesday press conference took place at Monaco today, and Lucky Strike BAR Honda driver Jenson Button was in attendance. Here's what he had to say...

Q: Those of you who have seen the section, what are you thoughts on the new section of track from the swimming pool to Rascasse?

JB: Rascasse is just a different entry really, isn't it? It's not all that different. You're coming in at 45 degrees instead of 90. The chicane beforehand is a little bit tighter, isn't it? It looks okay, it's just a normal chicane, isn't it? But the best bit about it is that it's tarmac pretty much all the way round, which will be quite nice. We won't be braking into turn one and both wheels locking up, so that's nice.

Q: The second question I wanted to ask you concerns qualifying - very important here, but elsewhere as well. Have you found that that the one lap format has meant that your approach to qualifying has changed? How do you prepare for qualifying. Are you concentrating harder than ever?

JB: Not at all... well, obviously it's different because we don't have four goes at it any more. I like qualifying now, I really do. I find it very exciting, but obviously it's going to be very important here and probably the most difficult circuit to get it correct is here. Either people will be pushing too gently, to stay off the wall, or you're going to have nasty accidents, so I think qualifying is going to be pretty good here.

Q: Jenson, an excellent but lonely fourth place [in Austria]. Does it signal a change in fortune?

JB: I think the car's been reasonably competitive for the whole season; we just haven't got the results. I think it is a reasonable position to finish in at the moment, we are not a top team at the moment, so it is good.

Q: At the start of the season you came in for quite a bit of criticism from your team-mate, do you think you have answered that?

JB: I don't really care. I really am not interested in answering that, but we are working well together well.

Q: So it is not a problem now?

JB: No, not at all. I think we said a few things that were a bit pathetic really but had to be said but we are working well together now. We are both very competitive, as we all are.