[26-08-2008] FOUR QUESTIONS TO EDO
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[26-08-2008] FOUR QUESTIONS TO EDO
You’re second in the championship now, nine points behind the leader: how confident do you feel going into the final part of the season?
EM: “Well, the F3 Euroseries is so competitive and everybody is at such a high level that it would definitely be a mistake to be too confident! But having said that, we showed that we are able to lead the championship at the start of the year and I have every confidence in the new evolutions brought to us by Volkswagen and also by Signature. Now it is up to me to make the best of them and obviously the driver is a much more subjective variable than his machinery. I’m feeling very positive though, so I’m confident that we can have a strong end to the season. Exactly what that will translate into in terms of results and classifications, I don’t yet know. As usual, I will take each race step by step – there’s still a long way to go.”
It’s true though that your last few races have not been quite as good as the start of the year...
EM: “Yes that’s true, and while it’s obviously disappointing to lose what was quite a good championship lead, it was beyond expectations to have that lead in the first place. Also, we now know the exact reasons why we encountered the problems that we did: it was essentially to do with finding the best compromise between set-up and tyres. After a lot of hard work, I believe we have a solution now. Even at the events where we struggled in qualifying we tended to have good race pace, but we were hit from behind on more than one occasion. That was just bad luck to some extent but really you make your own luck: had we qualified further up the field then we obviously would have stood less chance of finding ourselves in that situation. So a more consistent performance in qualifying is an area that we have focussed on.”
How many changes are there to your car for the second part of the season?
EM: “There’s nothing too dramatic: just a few small changes all round which should hopefully add up to an overall improvement. Volkswagen have done more work on the engine, which was already very good to start with, but I can’t say too much about that as we are still in the early stages of development. We’ve also got one or two new refinements on the car that should make it suit my driving style a bit better. Considering that this is still just their first full season, I have to say that Volkswagen has done an incredible job so far. Hopefully these latest evolutions could give us a little extra edge in the last four race meetings.”
The next race is at Brands Hatch: what do you think of it?
EM: “I’m very pleased that we are going back there as it is one of my favourite circuits. It’s a really demanding track where the driver can have a big input, as there are a few different ways that you can place the car and get round the corners. In short, it’s a track where you can be quite creative, which is something I always enjoy. It’s also the place where I took my first ever F3 Euroseries victory last year, so it has good memories for me. Every race is different though: my aim for Brands Hatch this year is to have a strong weekend right from the start and challenge for another win. I’ve spent a lot of the summer working on my physical fitness and mental preparation, and I am certainly up for the challenge!”
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