Some people have said that Ferrari is lacking a leader, do you think you can motivate the team?

There are always stories about who is doing what but people hardly ever know what is going on. There’s always someone blaming someone if we are not doing well but we have good people, good working relationships and these are the same people who last year were winning races, so it’s not like we don’t know what to do. Unfortunately we just haven’t got it right this year and once we start winning all the stories will be nice but that’s part of the whole thing. Hard publicity comes with hard times.

When you wake up in the morning, what’s your motivation?

Of course, when you’re winning it’s easy but when you’re not doing so well you are waiting, especially when you know there are improvements to the car and you can get back where you want to be. There’s always some motivation, we always want to improve. But I love the racing and the other stuff is on the side. I love the racing and that’s the main thing. Even when you don’t have the best car you try to get the best out of it and when you get the results you get a nice feeling out of it.

Some people have doubted your commitment and motivation. In Malaysia, for some reason you were in your shorts eating an ice-cream out of the car – it looked as if the team were quite surprised.

It’s nothing. I was retired and nobody else was running either. I had an issue with my car and I wasn’t going anywhere so it’s a big story out of nothing so it’s normal, I can do what I want when I retire. You always get the nice stories out of things so I don’t mind. I’ve been long enough in the business to know and I don’t really care what they write about me.