When Sebastian arrived at here, it was so cold like freezing winter in Shanghai even though it’s already April. Weather forecast said it becomes warmer this weekend but it will rain. It reminded us the memory of last year here, the first race that Sebastian won and climbed to the position of title contender.
"I had a good race here in 2007 when I finished fourth for Toro Rosso,” Sebastian said. “And then last year with the victory, so there are a lot of good emotions and memories attached to this place."
This year, Sebastian had already been quick and raced at the top from the very first part of the season, and in fact he’s finally gotten a victory in Malaysia. Everybody regards him as a main player for this championship. For the drivers who want to challenge the title, Sebastian is the “man to beat”. Of course fans expect so and media gives a big write-up to him.
"For the people, for you, I am probably the man to beat,” he admitted. “But for myself I don't think about these things, very much. The approach is the same as last weekend. We try to get everything out and try to win. We have a very strong car, we are in a good way, the team is working fantastically well at the moment and we try to win."
He started running eyeing another victory but he couldn’t be satisfied with its feeling. on Friday The team analysed the data and tried to solve the situation discussing with the factory in UK overnight. It’s not so rare to change the car settings by Saturday morning.
But this time was not a case. The RB6 never recover her good humor. At last the team decided to change the settings again according to the teammate’s data just in two hours by the qualifying session. Thanks to this effort, Sebastian could secure the fourth consecutive pole for the Red Bull Racing.
“We did some overnight changes and initially this morning we thought that they worked. You are always fighting the car but Mark was quite a bit quicker and partly we went a little bit towards his direction with the car settings. Especially thanks to the mechanics as they had zero lunch as we required a lot of changes. They had to work from the end of free practice to qualifying, so thanks for that.”
As the forecast said, it started raining just 30 minutes before the race. This was a good condition for him because he can drive in clear visibility starting from the pole position. It was same condition as the last years’ victorious race.
Not like last year’s, this rain never helped him. He had a bit wheelspin and dropped down to third position. And then he rushed into pit for wet tyres too early and lost his opportunity to fight back to the top.
“Today's race was really tough,” he said. “In fact, it was total chaos. So taking into account everything that happened during the race, I am actually pleased with sixth place. All in all, the race was a gamble, where scoring points was the most important thing. Everything can be over within seconds if you are not careful - or just plain unlucky”
First four flyaway races have finished. Even the race finished almost everybody didn’t know when they can fly back to Europe because of the flight restriction caused by the volcanic ash above all over the Europe. But Sebastian doesn’t care about that. “I will rent a car and drive back.!” he joked and his teammate joined ”Yeah, I'm in the same car as Seb, we're going back together.”
There is two weeks interval by the next race in Spain, opener of the European round. They have enough time to re-polish their speed and prepare for the race fully. Let’s wait and see the Red Bull Racing and Sebastian’s fight back to the top.
