Austria: Heidfeld talks of speeding drivers

Nick in the pits
By Phil Huff (15/05/2003)
May 15 2003

The Thursday Press Conference has been held at Austria, and Sauber Petronas driver Nick Heidfeld was in attendance. Here's what he had to say...

Nick, you've qualified well here but it hasn't been so good in the races, you've had a couple of incidents. What are your feelings about this circuit?

I'm quite looking forward to this race because in the last two years our car performed really well here. Last year I was fifth in qualifying, the year before sixth, but not so good in the race, as you said. Last year I had the big crash with Takuma, which for me was the biggest one I've ever had, but luckily nothing happened. And the year before my car stalled on the start but I got into the points anyway. And after the last two races, which were very difficult for us, especially Barcelona, I hope that this circuit will suit our car a lot better.

How has it been this year with Heinz-Harald? Obviously you speak the same language, come from the same town even. Is it a great advantage having his experience?

That he's German and we come from the same city doesn't really make a difference. It's simply nice having somebody that experienced in the team, especially compared to my previous team-mates, Felipe and Kimi, who are definitely very quick but obviously didn't know a lot about the set-up of the car and didn't know what was possible in Formula One. With Heinz, he's really into it. It's interesting to watch and see his ideas. Sometimes he sees things from a different perspective than I do, so I think I can learn something there.

But in some ways the team has been overtaken, by Renault for example. What's been going wrong? What is needed to get you back into fourth place?

I think at the moment it's unrealistic to aim for fourth place if you see how strong Renault has become. I think it's simply very difficult for us, not having a big manufacturer behind us, not having the amount of money that the other teams have, so our aim at the moment is to be fifth, and even that is going to be very difficult.

You have race here before, what are your thoughts on this being the last Austrian Grand Prix?

I would also say I have always liked to come here, especially as I mentioned before the car was quite quick here in the last couple of years. But on the other hand I am also looking forward to going to a new country and a new circuit.

If I could ask the inevitable question about team orders, they are banned now, but is that the right decision and is the ban actually enforceable.

Usually we do not have team orders in our team but I agree, I think it is not really possible to ban them or control it. The only thing is that perhaps it changes things so it is not so obvious for the spectators any more which you could argue about if it is better or not.

There has been something in the papers about Juan Pablo Montoya finding a rather unsympathetic traffic cop. I wonder if you could tell us experiences that you might have had with policemen and whether they ended more happily than they did for Juan Pablo.

The most tickets I get are for wrong parking but I tell you if any racing driver tells you he is never caught speeding he is lying.