Live from Hockenheim with Charles Pic

Charles, with the rain, the engine change this morning, and therefore the limited running, do you think you have extracted 100% of the package at your disposal?

100% sure that’s a no. That being said, I think we were able to extract a good part of it. This morning, I was only able to do three laps. So there are still plenty of things to try on my car that we couldn’t try. We made the right decision for qualifying. We had a good qualifying. So now we can focus on tomorrow’s race. It should be dry. We have the potential to have a good race.

With your engine change this morning, is it satisfying for you to have been able to qualify like that, finishing ahead of Timo?

Ah well yes, that’s for sure! When you only do three laps during the third practice session, you can’t complete the entire program you had planned. It immediately complicates things.

We could see that it’s a circuit where you adapt very quickly. As mentioned, you could only do very few laps but you immediately managed to be just behind Timo. We knew you liked the Nürburgring, here we are in Hockenheim …

The common point is Germany (laughs)! For sure, it’s a circuit that I appreciate, but not more than any other. I’ve only driven on it once, in GP2. But above all, I think it mainly comes from the fact that I know the team better and better, my engineers better and better, the car… I think it comes more from that than from the circuit itself.

Do you have the same developments as in England? Have you added new developments? Have you removed some developments?

We have the same developments as in England and we will have new ones in Budapest.

You will be able to use the race to see what you didn’t have time to test before, or is the race really separate?

Well, first of all, these evolutions have allowed us to step up a level in qualifications. That’s for sure and it’s positive. Now the race is going to be something else. What’s going to be interesting is seeing the level it will bring us to in the race because in qualifying, we have DRS and KERS. So I think it could be different in the race. In both a good and bad way, but in any case, I think it will be different. Anyway, this will be our first experience with this new package. So I think it will be interesting, with plenty of information to gather.

In general, it goes better in the race than in qualifying…

Ah yes, that’s certain. I think we’ll be ahead of the HRT. After that, what we need to see in the race is whether we stay at the same level compared to the Caterham or if we manage to get closer.

The changes made to Silverstone were the first resulting from the agreement with McLaren Applied Technologies. How were you personally involved in this process?

What I do at McLaren is simulator work. We focus on that. Then, our role as drivers is to give engineers feedback on what we want, providing the broad outlines (for example, more rear downforce in certain situations…). After that, it’s not us who design the parts.

You are returning to a solution for exhausts used by everyone, namely downward rather than upward. Did you feel the difference?

Yes, it’s certain there is a difference. After that, I think there are people who can use it much better than we do. But it’s going in the right direction and we’re continuing to work on it.

From our correspondent in Hockenheim

With the participation of RacingBusiness.fr