00:00Delighted to be joined by Toto. Now, congratulations. I mean, just fantastic to see Kimi grow and
00:06grow and calmly take that victory. Of course, a bit of luck had to go his way, but he controlled
00:10the race, didn't he? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, botched start. You know, these kids learn
00:16in the driving school with automatics, so we need to teach them how you release a clutch
00:19slowly, steadily and not too quick. But then he was fast and he had, yeah, that looks pretty
00:27grim. Did your heart sink when you saw that? No, I thought not again, because obviously
00:32we're not giving them the easiest of tools. Our starts have generally been a bit on the
00:36mediocre side and we need to improve that. But in that case, the driver had massive influence
00:41of that car not going away. Looked good with the wheel spin, but isn't fast. But then in
00:47the race, you know, he made his way up and obviously it was at the moment where it mattered. He
00:52was
00:52really fast and we were able to, you know, extend his stint by that one lap and that was,
00:57that caused George's race to go belly up and made a difference. I mean, I heard you saying
01:04on the radio there, you make your own luck. And in fairness, Kimi, he's been the faster driver
01:09all weekend apart from the start. And to your point, you know, the reason George was pulled
01:15in, because I guess he didn't want to fall back behind Kimi, right? Kimi made two and a half seconds
01:19on him at that point. Have you been surprised with Kimi's advantage over George this weekend?
01:24Well, I see it a little bit mixed because the mistake that was made collectively in qualifying
01:30really put him on the back foot with the car. He transformed the car that was good for pole
01:34position between the two. It was pretty narrow. And then obviously from Q1, it wasn't good
01:39enough anymore. And he had to fight with that two today. So I think on equal cars, it's going
01:47to be close as ever. But that's exactly the moment where it was about going fast. We had
01:52to decide to protect the position against a Leclerc, I believe. And Kimi was still putting
01:57in purple times. So that made the difference. But I guess he had a car that wasn't perfect.
02:02We obviously seen George lose position at one point through the race, just with what looked
02:06to me like the engine clipping, an unexpected result. I think from Mercedes' side, he seemed
02:12to use some battery to gain position, then very quickly lost battery and possibly...
02:17Yeah. It was a bug in the electric system, in the software that we thought we were going
02:26to give him an advantage by deploying energy. And what it gave him is a super clip that means
02:31it slows the car down. And this is where I unexpectedly lost the position to Leclerc. So
02:35we haven't covered ourselves in glory when it comes to George's race as well.
02:41Do you think more broadly, people are getting up to speed with the way this racing is going
02:46to unfold? Because we saw these back and forth moves into the chicane, down into turn one.
02:51But also we saw George stuck there towards the end of the race. And do you think that this
02:57is now a learning journey that people are getting better at in terms of protecting position?
03:02Yeah, absolutely. And this is, I guess, Andrea said that at the beginning of the season,
03:07that as a work team, you have a little bit of an advantage at the beginning. And the other
03:12teams are catching up, how to harvest, how to deploy the energy. And you could see today
03:15there wasn't, we couldn't get past the McLaren's because they understood. And also the Ferraris
03:21had the right strategy on energy deployment. And I think it's good to watch.
03:26Now, Toto, I remember coming to your factory for the car launch four years ago, and Kimi was
03:31there as a junior driver. I mean, he was a child. I mean, it's crazy, actually, to think of the
03:39journey that he's gone on. I know that you've believed in him and your faith in him has been
03:44repaid moreover than you can probably ever imagine. Are you even a bit surprised at his
03:50trajectory?
03:52You see how quickly it goes and how quickly we age also, no? Because that seemed like it was years
03:58ago when he was a kid. When he came into the office, he met James Ellison. And James Ellison
04:04thought it was a kid who has lost his parents and was looking for someone. And it's incredible.
04:11Yesterday, he was 14. Today, he's 19. He's winning two races in a row in Formula One. And
04:16we're really happy about the development that he's been taking.
04:19And he's made you look like a genius. Which, of course, you are.
04:23Of course.
04:24Of course.
04:24Can you tell Susie?
04:25Yes, of course.
04:26She doesn't always believe that.
04:28I'll relay that.
04:28No, but you know, the truth is we as a team, starting from Gwen, who runs our junior program,
04:34who spotted him when he was 11, to the whole team, the engineers that gave him the opportunity,
04:39the marketing, people that have been looking at him and protecting him. That's another factor.
04:43Now, we need to protect him from people talking about world championships. All of us, it's
04:47a joint effort to have two junior drivers in the lead of this championship.
04:53Great stuff. Toto, thank you very much for your time and congratulations today.
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