F1: German GP winners' press conference

• David Goodwin
• MNI - Motorsport News International
• Sun Jul 28 23:32:37 EDT 1996

Q  Damon, your first win in Germany and you now have 20
   victories equaling Michael Schumacher's record. You must
   be delighted with today, even though it seemed to be a
   pretty hard fight out there?

DH Yeah, it was a fantastic race all the way through. I made
   a not very good start and from then on it was going to be
   quite difficult. I had a good race with Jean and also
   later in the race with Gerhard and of course I was
   looking for an opportunity to pass but he was going to
   make it very difficult. I heard his engine make a bad
   noise coming out of the first chicane and I knew he had a
   problem, it was either him or me, I wasn't really sure
   until I was rather pleased to see it was his engine and
   not mine when he pulled out. So bad luck to Gerhard but a
   terrific result for myself. I've never won in Germany
   before and I'd forgotten about the fact it was my 20th
   victory, so there's a lot to celebrate today. I also want
   to thank all the people at the factory who worked very
   hard over the weekend. They came in and worked late to
   prepare parts for the car, so a special thanks to them.

Q  Your pit stops did you well during the race. You must
   have been doing a lot of mental calculations throughout
   the race to see whether you were going to get ahead of
   the two Benettons?

DH Yeah, well it was always going to be close because
   Gerhard was on one stop and I lost to him at the start,
   so it was always going to be difficult for me to make up
   the gap.

Q  What actually happened at the start? Was there any reason
   that you didn't get off as cleanly as you would have
   liked? 

DH Well I made a good initial start and then I let the revs
   drop too much and the engine wasn't pulling that hard.

Q  Jean, you made a very good start, you went from fifth
   position up to second. How pleased are you with today's
   result?

JA Honestly, I'm very happy but I'm a bit sad for my
   teammate. He did a very good job since the beginning of
   the season in the team. We are working very hard. At the
   beginning we had a car not so competitive and slowly,
   slowly we improve the car, we work with the team a little
   bit better now. It's a shame because we were able to be
   together here on the podium but personally I'm happy of
   course because I'm back third in the championship and I
   give back some more points for the team too.

Q  Were you aware that Gerhard had a problem with his
   engine? In fact did you have any problems with yours at
   all?

JA No I didn't have any kind of problem because I think what
   happened to the Gerhard, just seeing the smoke, was
   sudden. I just slowed down because it was just three laps
   to go. I was careful just down the straights, that's it.

Q  You've been on the podium six times now this season. It
   must be soon for first victory, do you think?

JA I hope so, but Damon and Jacques are working also very
   hard. They are always here. It is going to be a very
   interesting end of the championship of course but it is
   still very difficult for us.

Q  Jacques, you made a good start and then you seemed to
   almost be held up by Michael Schumacher for a while. Is
   that true or not?

JV Yeah, we had a pretty good start and we were just behind
   Michael on the first lap. I wasn't very aggressive, I
   didn't want to go off then and Michael was keeping his
   line. Then Hakkinen surprised me and got in front of me
   and then I was stuck behind these two until the pit stop. 

Q  Can you tell us a bit more about the pit stop because you
   had a pretty close call with Michael Schumacher. You both
   went in together and came out almost at the same time.

JV We had a slightly better pit stop than Michael's but he
   was in front of us in the pits so it was normal for him
   to pit in front of us, but then it was a good battle into
   the first chicane. I was a couple of car lengths behind
   him and I don't think he was expecting me to outbrake
   him.

Q  The championship now stands with Damon leading you by 21
   points. What were you expecting at the end of this
   weekend? Are you happy with that?

JV Well I was hoping to be closer than 21 points definitely
   but we didn't have a good beginning of the week and we
   had something wrong on the car that we found out only
   this morning in the warm up and it had been like that all
   weekend, so we were a little bit behind with our set ups
   and it showed today in the race but at least we were a
   little bit more competitive than during qualifying.

Q  Well Damon, we now go on to Hungary where you scored your
   first victory back in 1993 and you now have seven
   victories in one season which equals that of Jim Clarke
   and Ayrton Senna so you must be feeling pretty good at
   this moment?

DH It couldn't be better at the moment. I'm really pleased.

Q  Well gentlemen, thank you very much. 

-- 
David Goodwin