“When you win a race like this the feeling is very, very good.”

I was very interested in that. It is very important to have confidence as well as to build up experience.

I was looking at the history of the sport and I couldn’t understand why there have been so many good South American drivers, especially Brazilians.

If I could have pushed hard and attacked. But then I would have had a good chance of making a mistake.

Without going to what I think is my limit. I always say that my ideal is to get pole with the minimum effort, and to win the race at the slowest speed possible.

I’m brave to say that I won’t take this sort of risk.

I don’t like to go over curbs, because I don’t want to be hard on the car.

A German team could be quite good. But maybe they are a little bit too convinced that they are the best.

So in fact the only thing you can judge in this sport its the longterm. You can judge a career or a season, but not one race.

When I test I never go right to the limit. Only because when you are below the limit you can go at the same speed all day, and that’s the only way you can be absolutely sure about what you are testing.

Do you know, why I really love my helmet that much? Because it makes me 15 centimetres taller!

So I know at the beginning of the race, from all that I have analysed during the practice, whether I will win the race or not.

Sometimes it also helps you to understand the mentality of the people in the team a bit better.

I like the mentality of the Americans. It’s like when you talk about money.

I have always had this mentality because I hated to break anything on the car.

I think maybe the English don’t want to try something and look stupid, because they are a bit reserved.

That is an important part of my success. Another big part of my success is that I hated not to finish a race.

Sometimes when you get hammered till the small hours you feel pretty good in the morning, but really it’s just because you’re still a bit drunk.

You feel like you and the boats are one, you feel that no obstacle will put up any more resistance than the water does to your oars, you feel that hard work and grit and mental toughness will always win it for you in the end.

I feel like with the history of this platform, from vinyl to where we are now, it just seems like the next logical step.

Children, I feel, are as much entitled to privacy as human beings.

I didn’t feel self conscious ’cause my sisters and I all had thick brows, and by the time I got to the age that I could be self conscious about them, they were in style!

Human feeling is like the mighty rivers that bless the earth: it does not wait for beauty – it flows with resistless force and brings beauty with it.

I like the way hip-hop is now. It’s grown up enough so that it can get involved with politics if it feels like it.

One doesn’t defend one’s god: one’s god is in himself a defense.