Q: 
Congratulations Rob, it's been quite a wait for you this pole, number 12 in your WTCC career. Talk us through that sensational lap?

RB:
Huge thanks to the team, the car was fantastic. What helped us massively also is that it's one of the places where we did our six test days before the season, so we came here really understanding the car and were confident of the track. It's always been a great track for me, I won my first race for ALL-INKL.com back in 2013 here and it was against Mehdi as well so it's nice to be up here with him. Today was not so easy with the weather. Free Practice 2 was the first time I've ever driven the car in the wet, so that was quite an interesting experience. But obviously I was praying for it to be dry. And I just managed to pull the lap out when it counted in Q3. The pressure was on, you're sitting there for 10 minutes just waiting and of course everyone's watching and you don't want to let the team down. I think everyone knew we had a car that could potentially go on pole position, so to reward the boys in the team it's really nice.

Q:
We turn now to Alessandro Mariani, representing Team Honda, the winner of WTCC MAC3. A good team performance by your drivers, can you give us an overview of how your team won that competition, please?

AM:
The first win of 2017 in WTCC MAC3 is good for the championship standings but it's not enough to make me happy today. I was just surprised by the evolution of the qualifying because this morning with the few laps in the drying Tarmac we were immediately really competitive, the same in the wet conditions, very easily, not pushing too much. But as the track evolved and evolved, we started to push and follow the progress of the competitors, but we didn't have the set-up we expected. As you know, we arrived the last time with the full packaging of the 2017 car. As I knew before, we needed to take the experience about the car balance. And of course today in the tricky conditions, because of the weather, it was really difficult.

Q: 
Going into the races tomorrow, you have one driver on the front row in the Opening Race, but you have also Norbert Michelisz – with a lot of people supporting him – not so high up on the grid. What are the chances for the team in tomorrow’s races?

AM:
Tomorrow the forecast is a sunny day and not raining, so I don't think there will be a lot of overtaking here as we know perfectly well. So the starting position could be decisive. For the driver standings it's not so bad because we are in the same row, or close to Björk, and the difference between Volvo and our cars is pretty small. We hope tomorrow to improve and we will discuss in the briefing how to solve the problem we face today.

Q: 
We turn now to second placed Mehdi Bennani. Congratulations on that achievement. Does the result kind of make up for the fact that you'll be demoted five places for the Opening Race?

MB:
We know with the team that we only have one choice to try to be in Q3. And that's our target – to fight for Q3, because with our penalty of the Opening Race we are far away, so we know we have to fight only for the Main Race. It's good to fight for the pole, it was very close with Huff –  congratulations to Huff – he sets a good level of the car and I have something like three tenths to find. Thanks, Huff, to give me this! But he did a very good job with the car and it's nice to have two cars from Citroën starting from the front row.

Q:
And can you say why you didn't get the pole position – was there anything with that lap that didn't go quite as well for you?

MB:
Yes, because my name is not Rob Huff – that's it! I try to drive on the limit and my limit gave me something like three tenths from the pole. And that's why we have different names between each driver.

Q: 
Turning next to third place driver Esteban Guerrieri. Esteban, congratulations on yet another impressive performance in what is only your fourth WTCC race, so an excellent achievement. Just explain your lap because, obviously you made a big effort to get into Q3, given you’re driving for one of the smaller teams in a car that’s not so competitive based on its level of development?

EG:
First of all, thanks all for coming, congratulations Rob, great lap, also to Mehdi, to the Honda guys and also for the WTCC MAC3. From my side a positive day definitely. We kind of realised we had a good pace straight away when we came out in Free Practice 1. Then we did some changes and obviously the track got a bit better. We put it P4 with old tyres then we thought the potential was there. Then in Free Practice 2 with the wet it was a bit difficult, more difficult for us, but then it was nice because nobody had the edge for the qualifying, you have to find the edge for the qualifying. We did the right changes and I'm very pleased with how we work with my engineer and with the Campos team. And yes, the car was there, it was very competitive. I put a good lap in Q2. Then when you push it the limit is very narrow and I realised that in my second stint that I over-pushed and I went four-tenths slower or sixth-tenths slower, actually. And then in Q3 you have to put everything into one lap. My first sector wasn’t very good, in the second corner I lost a little bit the rear, that corner is really tricky. And then I tried to put together the rest of the lap which worked very well. Obviously, it wasn't enough for pole position, but I'm happy with what we got and tomorrow a good amount of points is the target.

Q:
Turning back to Rob, in the first race you'll start P10 - how difficult is that psychologically, to get through that race knowing you will have the dream of the pole position waiting for you?

RH:
It's tough obviously, but I’ve been here 14 years now so I'm getting used to it. But potentially the biggest chance for us is in the Main Race. And of course I’m lucky that I’ve got a very strong Citroën. So I think I have a good a chance as anyone, to take my position in that Main Race on pole position. We’ve secured five points today which is great and in the Opening Race tomorrow we just take what we can and hopefully make it a happy day in the Main Race tomorrow.

Q:
Quick word on the fans here because they're big supporters of you Rob, especially when there was no Norbi for them to cheer in Q3. You’re obviously very popular here so what would you say about the Hungarian fans?

RH:
They're okay... (laughter). I’m really lucky. I’ve always had a good relationship with Norbi and I think because of that we’ve had quite a lot of fun together here in Budapest. I've had a lot of success and a lot of luck here. It's such a wonderful place to come. You open the garage tomorrow morning at 09h00 and everyone's just going crazy. The atmosphere is just immense and it's just wonderful to be here. It's an atmosphere that is very difficult to create anywhere else and that's totally down to the fans. I'm very lucky that I'm quite well liked, I think.

Q:
Obviously this wasn’t the position you were expecting. Just explain qualifying and what went wrong?

NM:
I was hoping for a bit of rain because in Free Practice 2 we realised the car is quite competitive when the circuit is wet, but then drying up we knew that with 80 kilograms it's not going to be easy. I expected Rob to be on top, but I expected us to be right behind. We have to analyse, as Alessandro said. The gap is a bit bigger, it was around six or seven tenths for me being in P6, which is a bit too much for us because the target is to fight for the championship. Starting from P6 in the Main Race tomorrow, you could get worse than that, but still I wanted to be in Q3. The lap was okay, there’s not much more we could have done differently, I guess. Tomorrow starting from fifth and sixth my target is to be once or twice on the podium.

Q:
Is that game over or you can still achieve something from that?

NM:
Sure, last time I was starting from fifth in the Opening Race, still I was close to win the race. Starting from P6 in Monza it was okay. So I think the main target for tomorrow is to score some important points for the championship. Being at home, having won here twice before, my main goal is not only to score points but at least to be on the podium once.

Questions from the floor:

Q:
Szilvia Magyar (Motorzaj.hu, Hungary) to Rob Huff: Rob, what do you expect tomorrow for the Main Race start with these two gentlemen around you?

RH:
It's always difficult, we've got many good starters, everyone's experienced now with these cars. It's the third race of the year and it's always going to be tough. I have to say the Citroën is probably the most complicated car I ever had to try and launch off the line. And I think Mehdi will probably agree, there’s a quite complicated system involved. When you get it right it's very rewarding. In Morocco it was a disaster but in Monza both races I got really good starts. So I'm now quite confident with the start and we just have to keep it clean into Turn 1 and hopefully be still in P1. I'm quite happy and confident with the balance of the car. As I said from the testing we did here I'm quite confident that, providing we stay P1 into Turn 1, we can take it all the way to the flag.

Q:
Aleksander Babic (Eurosport Serbia) to Alessandro Mariani and Norbert Michelisz:  Mr. Mariani you mentioned that the evolution of the track during the qualifying session caught you by surprise. Would you like to elaborate more on that in case Norbi already didn't mention it, were you expecting rain in qualifying?

AM:
For the evolution I mean the improvements of the competitors because the track was pretty good maybe the first lap. Both Tiago and Norbi started after two or three minutes so the dirt coming from this rain was out. So probably our first lap was better than the other for the track conditions. Then with the second run I expected big improvement that we didn't have and also it was confirmed in Q2 unfortunately. I was confident because Tiago did immediately a very good lap in Q1, he didn't need to do a second run and this made me quite surprised for the final result in Q2. Now we have to understand why.

NM:
Difficult to add anything to that. I think both of us were expecting a bit more, like we said. We really have to analyse. I didn't see the data, I didn't really see how much time there was left in my qualifying lap. From the feeling it felt okay. I was struggling with understeer throughout Q1, Q2. I think the problem was the same for Tiago. I'm quite confident that we can find a solution for tomorrow. Of course the qualifying is over. Also in the morning I wasn't really able to do any laps in the dry so the confidence was missing but in the end I don't want to put it down to that, we just have to improve as a team a bit.

Q:
Simon István (autóMAGAZIN, Hungary) to Alessandro Mariani: My question is to Mr. Mariani. Tomorrow in the first race you're going to have a driver starting from the first row which is Ryo and the driver starting from the middle which is Norbi. Is it possible in your opinion that you're going to use team orders? You could tell by radio to Ryo that Norbi needs those points more, or you leave it to Norbi?

AM:
Tiago is the man starting from the first row, not Ryo. In the Main Race Tiago will start from fifth row and Norbi in the third row. So team orders tomorrow are not considered for sure.

NM:
So the order is Tiago ninth and me sixth in qualifying.

AM:
It's a bit early now for team orders. Of course we already made a plan for the future and tomorrow is not the case after these qualifying results.

Q:
András Lantos (Eurosport Hungary) to Alessandro Mariani: I would like to ask Alessandro Mariani. Was it strategy to let Ryo first in WTCC MAC3? It looked a bit scary but then it turned quite good.

AM:
With the WTCC MAC3 today for me it's clear that Volvo had a technical problem, so I don't take into account the result. I don't know what happened but the gap was absolutely crazy so we have no proof if the strategy was good or not.