Nick - “Any Overtaking Will Be Down To The Tyres”

At the Official Monaco GP Driver FIA Press Conference yesterday afternoon, Nick shared his thoughts on the race, and what he believed the key elements would be over the coming days.

Nick, second here in 2005. Renault reckon they are historically good here. What are your thoughts about this race coming up?

NH: I am definitely looking forward to it. Renault has been strong here the last couple of years. Robert (Kubica) did a strong job here last year qualifying second and finishing on the podium. Obviously, it is going to be the first time for me with this car here. It seems that our car performs strong over a bumpy surface, which we always have here in Monaco, so it is going to be interesting.

And you have finished nine out of your 10 Monaco Grands Prix. What's the secret to that?

NH: Not crashing into the barriers! I didn't know that. I think that is quite a high rate of finishing and probably that's why even in weak cars sometimes you score points here, so that's obviously quite important.

This year you are saying that tyres are the key?

NH: Well tyres this year have been important in each of the races. For the first time this year we are on the supersoft tyres. We have used them in testing but that was quite a while ago and it is going to be crucial and quite interesting to see how the tyres are going to behave. We will try to use Practice One and Two to get a good understanding for them.

Monaco is also special because you don't drive on Friday. Do you like that and do you have a routine for what you do on Friday?

NH: Pretty much the same; I would prefer to drive on Friday. As it is now, you have some meetings with the engineers, some PR stuff to do, but basically in your mind, you're just looking forward to the next day, you want to get into the car and get on with it.

Qualifying seems to be most exciting but not so important. Would you suggest changing the system again and maybe to come back to the system of some years ago with only one lap, to make it more exciting?

NH: Well, the reason why qualifying might not be as important as in the past any longer is nothing to do with the way qualifying is now, in three sessions. It's down to the tyres, why some teams over the last few races chose to save some tyres. I think the way qualifying is now with the three sessions, down to ten cars at the end is good, but we have to see if we want to have it the way it is now, that people chose not to go onto the quicker tyres.

I don't know if you are aware but there was a huge lorry fire down at turn one last night and they've had to replace a very large section of tarmac there, going into the apex and it's in the braking zone as well. I just wondered if any of you have been down there and viewed it at all, and if you haven't, your thoughts on it, how dangerous it might be?

NH: Well, I don't know if it's true, but from what I heard, it was dangerous of the guy to smoke and fuel the car at the same time. I don't know if there really is a reason but that's the one I was given! I walked the circuit before and it looked OK, it didn't look… it looked like they did a good job.

We know now that overtaking is possible; I want to know what you think about overtaking here on such a narrow track, Monaco? What's going to happen?

NH: I think we've seen a lot more overtaking everywhere so far, but I think in Monaco it will still stand out in the way that there will not be more overtaking than in the past, even though we will be allowed to use the DRS on the start and finish straight. First of all, it's (the zone is) very short, like 350meters or something like that – the whole straight – and in the past we've had like 800meters. And on top of that, even if you use it, there's no way you can go, because the car in front of you is taking what we call a straight line, it takes the corner on the right hand side, on the inside. You cannot go to the left on the outside because there's no way you're going to pass there, so I think it's a bit useless to use the DRS here to be honest, but we're going to use it. If we will see more overtaking? It might be more down to the tyres, but as we've discussed earlier on, we still have to fight out how big the differences are between soft and supersoft and how long the tyres are going to last.