Part 1: Lance Stroll, Charles Leclerc and Franco Colapinto.

Franco, if we could start with you, please. A brilliant race last time out. Just how much of a breakthrough was China for you?
Franco Colapinto: It was good. I've been looking for those points for a long time and it was really positive for me and for the team to have a double points finish, again, after a very long time also, so it's good. Of course, we were looking for more and it was looking really positive at the start of the race. We were running fifth and sixth. It looked like we could score a whole lot more points and of course the Safety Car kind of damaged our race, mine and Pierre's as well. Mine, because of the strategy, was much worse. But it was still positive to see the performance, to see that we could fight at the front and that we could be out there with the big teams. I think generally, it was a really positive weekend in China. Coming from Melbourne, it was a big step forward and that was of course really positive and motivated a lot of people in the factory. You could see [at Enstone] I went a couple of days ago everyone was looking really positive, happy and motivated, wanting more, and that's what we want to see. So yes, good weekend.

Confidence is a fickle thing for drivers. Just how much happier are you with this year's car compared to last year?
FC: I'm happier, of course. When you can fight a bit further up it makes you feel more confident, makes you give that extra little bit in different situations. I think when you are so close to Q3, when you're in the fight, it is different. Last year unfortunately we didn't have that. This year it's looking much better and of course the car did steps and it's looking much closer to the other teams. I think also knowing that we have a lot of performance coming, or that we see many different things to improve, it's also really positive. When you are up there and you know that you've got many things to fix and to improve, it's even better. So, I think looking forward to this year, it's feeling more competitive and that makes you happier, and of course, we want to be fighting for points consistently, which is what we are looking for and trying to aim at.

And you think you can achieve that this weekend at Suzuka?
FC: Yeah, we'll see. I think it's another new weekend, new track, very different on energy, on kind of corners, very long, very high speed, so it's going to be really different. I think still we need to understand our biggest weaknesses and where we are still needing to work more. China was a really different track to this one, so we need to see. But I think generally it's new for everyone. No one really knows where it's going to be and we need to wait until tomorrow.

Lance, if we could come to you now. Difficult start to the year for the team given the problems. How would you describe the mood in the team? Let's start with that.
Lance Stroll: Well, everyone's just working as hard as they can to improve the situation for sure. None of us are happy with where we are. It's not the start to the season that we hoped for, but it is what it is and we're just working as hard as possible to improve it.

Can we talk about potential improvements? Laps have been limited, we know that, but do you believe the car still has potential?
LS: I think so, yes. We know we have issues on the engine side. There are areas we need to work on with the car. I think high-speed corners are still a weakness for us. So yeah, we're just trying to improve in all areas that need work and it's just about bringing performance as quick as we can.

Honda's home race here in Japan. What does success look like for you here at Suzuka?
LS: We're just trying to improve the issues we had in China. In China we had big vibration problems, reliability issues, so just tackling some of those problems. I think getting both cars to the chequered flag would already be a good step forward for us.

Final one from me. There's a lot of speculation surrounding the role of team principal at Aston Martin. What are your thoughts on it? Do you think Adrian has too much on his plate as things stand?
LS: I don't know all the details about that, but I know Adrian's team principal right now. I know that we have to improve the engine, we have to improve the car, and I think that's what everyone's focused on.

Alright, thank you for that. Charles, if we could come to you now. Two races, two podiums for Ferrari so far this year. How much potential does this year's car have?
Charles Leclerc: Well, I think, as everyone is saying, this championship is going to be all about development and the upgrades that each team is going to bring. For now, we are in an okay-ish place, but of course we're not here to only do podiums and we want to win races, which at the moment seems very difficult because Mercedes is at a very high level. But we are working very hard and especially the people back at the factory are working extremely hard to bring upgrades as soon as possible. I know there are quite a few things coming up soon. Whether this is going to make the difference or not, I don't know, and I'm pretty sure the others are not on vacation either, so it's going to be tough.

You say you're in an okay-ish place. Just how close to Mercedes are you?
CL: I don't think it's as close as maybe people think. Obviously the first few races we see lots of fighting between the cars, which is actually quite nice, but as soon as you are a little bit suboptimal with these cars you lose a lot of lap time. So, our only chance to stay with them is to annoy them in the first few laps, but as soon as they get free air then they've shown their real pace in the last race, and I think there's still these four or five tenths that we've seen throughout these first two races. So. it's still a significant advantage. But yes, that doesn't discourage me and again we have some things in the pipeline. We've got to focus on ourselves, not trying to overdo it because it's never good in these situations, and then we'll see where that brings us.

The gap between you and Mercedes appears to be a little bigger in qualifying than it is in the race. Do you think the energy recharge changes for qualifying here at Suzuka will bring you closer to them?
CL: I don't think it will be a game changer. I think it will be pretty similar, apart from for the driver where maybe there's a little bit less lift and coast, which is I think a good thing. I think for qualifying there are still some changes that need to be done to make sure that we can push at the maximum, whatever the limit of the car is. But at the moment, so far for the first two races, it was more about managing everything properly in qualifying rather than the actual flat-out push that we were used to in Q3 in the past years. So, there's still some fine-tuning to be done on that, but I don't think that this particular change will be a game changer for this weekend.

Questions From The Floor

(David Croft - Sky Sports F1) Charles, on that subject then, of tweaks that can be made for qualifying, what would you do if you had the power to improve things? What would your suggestions be?
CL: I don't really want to go into the detail of this because it's so complex and there are so many different little things that you can do. I also think that obviously whenever there are these kinds of changes everybody is pushing a little bit his agenda. But I think, just whatever solution helps us to push at the maximum those cars, because that's what I loved, that's what I love about this sport is when you get to Q3 and you have the maximum pressure on you to deliver at your best at that moment and that you try and do a lap that you haven't done before. At the moment this is not possible because every time you do something that you haven't done before then the car is just trying to adapt to it and it makes you lose more than what you gain. I think this is the biggest problem at the moment. The solutions are very, very, very complex, but I know that everybody is trying to brainstorm ideas in order to find the best solution and hopefully we come with a good solution very soon.

Charles, have you done a qualifying lap of Monaco on the simulator with these cars yet?
CL: We've got quite a lot of issues to solve, so Monaco is quite a long way before we think about it and try it. So no, I haven't tried Monaco yet.

(Mara Sangiorgio - Sky Sports F1, Italy) A question to Charles. On this track, Ferrari can do something like Max did last year, beating the stronger McLaren?
CL: I think it's a very different situation. I think after the first free practice we'll already have an idea of where we stand compared to Mercedes. I don't see any characteristics that would change drastically what we've seen in the first two races, so at the moment I will say no. But yes, let's wait and see. There are still some very long back straights where we know Mercedes is going to be extremely strong, but it's also a very twisty track in the first two sectors, so hopefully we can have a big enough advantage to be faster on the overall lap. But at the moment it looks unlikely with the picture that we've made ourselves in the first two races.

(Raphael Sampt - Servus TV) Question for Charles. Sebastian Vettel once said, "In some way everybody is a Ferrari fan," and people love to see you fighting up front again. After all these years in red, what is Ferrari to you?
CL: Ferrari is family and a team that I've always loved and dreamed of driving for since I was a kid, and this hasn't changed one bit since I joined the team in 2019. So, the passion is still there. Then of course the will to win, and we want to win eventually, and I want to win. It's been so many years obviously working with the team to try and come back to the top. It's been a good step forward this year, we are just not yet where we want to be, and we'll keep pushing towards that direction. I hope our time will come soon because yes, it's been a long time since I started and obviously time has passed. I'm doing my best and I hope our time will come this year or as soon as possible.