Q. Congratulations, Mika, on your second pole position of the season. How did your qualifying go today?

Mika Hakkinen: "It went well and I am happy with the final result. But we have been trying various different setups, yesterday and again this morning, and there have been some radical changes. That's why I haven't been able to feel 100 percent confident with the car in any of the sessions. When we made another big modification immediately before qualifying this afternoon, I started to feel more and more comfortable, and we were going faster and faster all the time. But even then we still haven't reached the maximum performance. Obviously yesterday's rain didn't help our programme. But finishing first makes me feel alright."

Q. The gap between you and David is pretty small this year. Will he be a threat?

Hakkinen: "Certainly. It was an exciting qualifying session, and Rubens was also going flat out and performing extremely well. In the very last section, corner 12, he was only one-tenth slower than us. But as I said, we have been making improvements to the car all through the session, so I knew I would able to go quicker and quicker. So although I knew about the threat all the time, but there was always something in reserve."

Q. Which other competitor do you fear most?

Hakkinen: "Tomorrow's race is 72 laps. That is the biggest threat."

Q. Does that mean you are still worried about reliability?

Hakkinen: "All through my career, whenever I have had a good position on the grid, there has always been extra worry about the things that might go wrong. You just have to put them out of your mind. At the moment the team has the benefit of some very good testing and they have discovered all the problems that we had in the first race. At the end of the day I don't feel under any pressure that the car is going to break down. We will only know the truth at the end of tomorrow."

Q. With the gaps so small, are you expecting a harder race than one year ago?

Hakkinen: "Probably. Also, the revised pit entrance and exit will probably influence our tactics for the race. We just have to wait and see."

Q. David, we saw some hard driving from you at the end of the session. Are you pleased with your performance, in spite of being 2nd fastest?

David Coulthard: "Yes, I am very happy with the way the weekend has gone so far. The first time I have really been able to drive the car in the wet was yesterday and it seemed quite well balanced, as it was in the dry. The only thing that stood in the way me trying to take pole position from Mika was that bit of over-driving at the beginning of my final run. I heard a funny noise over my radio and missed my braking [for Turn 1]. When you have flat-spotted a tyre, like I did there, if you over-brake again, the tyre will always return to the same flat spot to lock up again, so you have to be very careful.

"In the end I still thought I could have gone quicker, so I feel happy with my performance. Second place on the grid isn't the absolute best but at least I showed my most competitive performance ever at this circuit. I feel very strong for the race tomorrow. Last year I had a mechanical problem which forced me to abandon my last qualifying runs, so looking at figures doesn't always tell the full story.

I could have been quicker than Mika here today and now I feel confident about the race. The car feels really together and the back end is nice and stable. I'm looking forward to the race."

Q. Mika said he didn't have full confidence in his car at the beginning of the session. Were you still altering your chassis setup, too?

Coulthard: "I only made a couple of small adjustments to the car, because basically I was too cautious on the first run and too aggressive on the second. As I said earlier, the only thing that stood between me and pole position was a couple of small mistakes on my part. We have to wait and see what happens tomorrow. The pit lane is significantly different from past years, so that will be a distraction."

Q. What differences to your strategy have been dictated by the pit lane alterations?

Coulthard: "I prefer not to elaborate, because that will give everyone an indication of what we intend to do. However, it does change the way you look at the race. The time it takes to make a pit stop is obviously important to strategy, and the only reason to have mentioned it today is because it is so different from last year."

Q. Rubens, tell us how you feel to be in 3rd place today

Rubens Barrichello: "I am really pleased. I hope this doesn't sound arrogant, but I have been waiting for a good car through all the time I have been in F1. Today's lap was one of the best laps of my life, but last year's qualifying lap here was also one of the best I have ever done, and I qualified 14th. It just shows that I need a good car. This car is good, and although it's performing well, it's still not good enough to beat the McLaren.

"We have already shown people this is not a bluff, and now we have to show that we can keep on going. Gary [Anderson] has put a lot of input into the car and the whole team is motivated to keep on making progress. And the crowd! I promised myself that I would not start waving to them until the last lap. When I did start waving, I almost fell out of the car! After Senna died in 1994, almost ten percent of the F1 fans here in Brazil stopped watching the sport at all. There are still two or three percent who will never come back, but all the rest are back, still with me. That gives you a very good feeling."

Q. Can you win the race?

Barrichello: "I don't think I can win if Mika and David are on the track, but it is not impossible. Reliability is always a problem for everyone at the start of the season, just as it was for me in Melbourne, so after today I am hoping to be on the podium. But it is difficult to know because we still haven't managed to do a full race distance. We have done 400 kilometres, but not a full GP simulation."