Q&A with Vitaly Petrov in Suzuka

Vitaly, how are you looking forward to the Japanese Grand Prix?

We should be stronger on this track as our car looks very good on high speed corners, so it will be very interesting to see how we do here. Of course, Singapore was not fantastic but I think for this event we should be better.

As you say, Singapore was a difficult weekend, Suzuka should be different?

Suzuka is a proper circuit; it’s not a street circuit or a dirty circuit like it was in Singapore and it’s not as bumpy as it was in Singapore…

It’s quite an unforgiving track if you go off track…

If you go off on any corners here it’s difficult to recover or for your car to survive as the track is very narrow and the walls are very close; so you need to be very happy with driving on the limit.

With all the challenges of Suzuka, how do you expect to do?

It’s difficult to say as every circuit is always different. Because we have Pirelli tyres we don’t know how they will survive here, or how high the degradation will be. If you look at the past, our car has looked very strong on the high speed corners so I hope we will be quick.

The fans seem to love you here…

The fans are crazy here, they love formula 1, they remember Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost so they love Formula 1 and of course they love to see us so I hope to show them good result.

Source Lotus Renault GP