BMW racer Nick Heidfeld is looking forward to racing in front of his and the team’s home crowd this coming weekend, even if the 2009 season to date hasn’t been what he had hoped for. However, for this round they will have a few new developments which he hopes will see them a little bit higher up the grid...

It has been three weeks since the last grand prix. I would like to ask what have you done and what your team has done to make you faster for this race?
The team obviously did quite a lot at the factory. We will have a couple of new parts here. We have a new floor or diffuser on the car. We have a new front wing and a new rear suspension. I used the three weeks quite intensively to keep up with my physical training. I visited the team once or twice and hope that we will see another step forward.

Nick, obviously you have had a difficult start to the season. But do you feel the team is still making progress and pushing hard and will continue to push hard all the way until the end of the season?
Well, I would not say still. I think in the first couple of races we were going downwards unfortunately but since then we started to move up slowly. It has never been as extreme as this year in Formula One that you really see when somebody brings an update. Whenever we brought an update to the car we did move forward and were able to score points in Barcelona and Istanbul. But then as soon as we had nothing on the car we tended to fall back. That’s why I have hopes for here and that we will be able to score points again. I know that there is a lot more in the pipeline for the upcoming races. Of course, it is very unlikely to move us where Red Bull and Brawn are, that’s for sure, that’s clear. But at least it would be great if we can fight for points on a regular basis.

There’s this big legend about the Nordschleife here. I want to know your experience driving around it with any car and if you have a wish to one day have a Formula One race here, even if the safety standards would be a little bit different?
Yeah, I think I have quite a lot of experience around there. I said earlier, when they opened the new park that the first lap I did here was together with my father, not being able to reach the pedals but just steering a bit. And I would say it ended two years ago when I had the chance to drive around the Nordschleife in an F1 car which was one of the best experiences I’ve ever had here. I have to say I was surprised how well the track suited the F1 car. Of course it’s too dangerous, the run-off areas are not big enough but the corners themselves are great and it was fantastic doing those three laps. Unfortunately, on each of those laps, I had to follow a camera car, so I couldn’t go at full speed but I would love to do it any time again.

I would like to ask what is your opinion about the possibility of having a Bulgarian Grand Prix in the next two or three years because tomorrow there will be negotiations with Mr Ecclestone?
It’s very hard to judge because I don’t know where it would take place, how it would be, but as Timo said, it’s always great to go to new tracks, but not only that, but also to new countries, new cities but very hard to judge from where we sit, not spending a lot of time focussing on that.

What would you want from a new circuit like this? Changes in elevation? Overtaking places?
Nordschleife with more run-off. It would be nice to have overtaking opportunities but normally if you try to build those in, that doesn’t make the track very exciting. What I found is that, as you just said, that elevation changes normally make it quite exciting. I think there are some or a lot of old tracks that have their own nature and are good fun but there are also some new tracks that are good fun. I don’t think it’s an easy job to build a track that is exciting to drive but I think the guys who are doing it have so much experience now that they should come up with a pretty good solution.

You mention physical fitness and you worked very hard before the beginning of the season, you even lost weight which is quite easy for a chubby guy like me but very hard for an athlete like you. You did all this stuff and now the car isn’t that competitive. How frustrating is it and would you subject yourself to this torture again before a season?
Yeah, of course I would do it again. I assumed that we would be in a good position to really fight at the front but now, as we have cancelled KERS, I will go back to being fat!

A quarter of the grid is German; don’t you think that sometimes there are too many German drivers? And, especially for those at the back, is it good to have people talking about Sebastian right now? Nick and Adrian, you must suffer from that a little bit, or not?
I guess you’re not German, asking this question! I think if you look at the last twenty, thirty, forty years of Formula One there have not always been five Germans. There were times when there was nobody and maybe a third or quarter of the field was Italian or French. That’s just the way it goes. I think most of us sitting here were lucky that Michael had such a strong impact in the world of motor sport, in the world of F1, which maybe made it a bit easier for us to come here. Nobody knows how it will go in the future but I think the teams always try to get the quickest driver and their nationality is not that important. Your remark about there being more attention on Sebastian at the moment than on most of us sitting here is just very natural, I think. He’s had a very good season, he’s still in a position to fight for the championship with Jenson. Who would expect anything else?

Nick, you’ve been in Formula One as long as Jenson has been. Does seeing him win now, having a car to do so, while you’ve both had ups and downs in your careers over all these years, does it make you a bit frustrated to see that you still don’t have a car to win or does that give you confidence that you could do it as well, as long as you get the car?
I like to see him winning, it rather gives me confidence, although it’s not only because of that. I believe in myself anyway but I think all the people I speak to and know are happy for him to win because he was fighting with not a good car and now he’s able to show what he can do and it probably shows people that are not so much into Formula One how important the car is, but that’s just the way it goes.

What about your future? Do you know where you will be next year, in which team and are you already working on that?
As you probably know, at BMW we don’t speak about our contracts, so there’s not much I can say.