#*transcripted

Q: Liam, let’s come to you now. What a difference a year makes. You’re coming to Suzuka on the back of a brilliant Chinese Grand Prix weekend. Just how much confidence did those two points finishes give you in Shanghai? Liam LAWSON: Yeah, it was good. It was a good weekend for sure. To be honest we weren’t very, very fast through the weekend, we qualified quite badly and it definitely wasn’t a track that suited us, so we definitely made the best out of it. I think at the start of the race we were aiming to try and get to the points. We definitely didn’t expect to finish where we did. Obviously, it helps having some of the front guys not finishing, but even still we would have been back into the points, which would have been a good race for us. So happy with China. I’m sure this weekend’s going to be tough. Obviously, we have new changes to the cars this weekend that we have to try and adapt to, but it’s been a decent start.

Q: Just from a driving point of view, are you enjoying this year’s smaller, lighter cars? LL: They’re very different for us to drive at the moment. They’re very different to get used to each track. I think the big difference is we used to go into a weekend spending pretty much all of our time thinking about setting up the car and optimising the car balance. Right now, it’s really energy management. We spend so much time talking about trying to manage the energy and get the most out of that because there’s so much lap time in it. The racing is quite different as well. We have to basically use a lot of different tools and drive a lot differently to try and overtake and defend, and it’s something that we’re still learning. So far, because it’s new, it’s obviously quite different and difficult, to be honest. So, it’s something that we’re also getting used to.

Q: Are you having to be more strategic in your approach to the racing this year compared to last year when you had DRS, for example? LL: Yeah, I think so. I think there are just more consequences when you get it wrong. If you use too much energy or something like this, it can be quite punishing. So we definitely have to… you’re doing a lot more thinking, I would say, when you’re driving.

Q: (Ben Waterworth) Question for Liam. You were touching on before in China about how it was a race you weren’t expecting to do so well, recover to get some points through circumstances, you mentioned. How encouraging is it that you’re able to come away from a race weekend that you maybe were not expecting to do well and come away with some points? How do you think that will place you for the rest of the year when it comes to tracks where maybe you’re expecting that as well? LL: Obviously – touch wood – so far, it’s been quite good reliability. We obviously had a tough start in Melbourne in the race just from an issue on the start line, but in terms of the rest of the reliability it’s been okay. Obviously in China a lot of cars, I think seven cars maybe, didn’t finish. So at this point of the season it’s really important to basically make the most of those races and that’s really what we did in China. We played a good strategy. Basically, all the things in our control, obviously outside the performance, which we try to get the most out of, we maximised, which is what we’re trying to do each weekend. So we’ll try to do the same this weekend. I think obviously going into the next part of the season quite a few teams will be bringing, like us, upgrades and things, and the development race will be fully under way.