Red Bull Racing’s Sebastian Vettel took part in Thursday’s official press conference ahead of this weekend’s Belgian Grand Prix where he was quizzed about the repercussions of losing two engines in one race weekend, his championship hopes and the ‘incident’ between himself and Jenson Button at the European Grand prix less than a week ago.

Sebastian, last weekend was obviously not a very good weekend for you. First of all, two engines failures which means you have got two less for the rest of the season. What are the repercussions you expect from that?
Heikki Kovalainen: I have got three left if you fancy a Mercedes.
Sebastian Vettel: Well, we need to see. Obviously it is not a good thing as you said. Last weekend having two failures within two days was not a good thing. Surely it affects the programme for the rest of the season. The last thing we want is to take a penalty, so the question now is what can we do. We are considering now all our options and possibly this means less running for myself on a Friday, so less practice which for sure is not an advantage. But in the end of the day do you want to take a grid penalty, yes or no, and I think you know maybe it is better to have a bit of time off and take some coffee in the break rather than starting 10 places back at some race, so we will see but for sure from now onwards we cannot have any mistakes or failures again. That’s for sure.

And how do you feel about your championship chances still?
I think it is still possible. I am not giving up, definitely not. For sure 25 points is not easy but we have seen how quickly things can change. Also I think one thing that extremely helps is that Jenson has not been very consistent the last races. He hasn’t scored a lot of points. I don’t know what was wrong but in the end it helps us. We should have been scoring some points the last few races, we did not, so that doesn’t help but for the future it still remains open. We will push and we will fight. We are in the hunting position, so we will have to score big points.

You were just talking about how the car was well suited at Silverstone. Are you feeling the same about this race as well?
I think it should suit our car more than Valencia but in the end of the day we have to find out. Just by the layout, the speed of the corners, I think it favours our car, but we still need to see how quick we are. I hope we are extremely quick. I hope the weather will be according to what we need and according to our liking. If that means rain, then it is rain. If it is dry, then it is dry. We will see. But, for sure, looking at the championship we are in the hunting position, so we have to win races and score big points, so our target for this weekend is to win and I think it looks good so far. We haven’t done a single lap, so we need to find out.

At the end of the race in Valencia, Jenson (Button) wasn’t very happy. He said that you cut him up at the first corner, he dropped back to ninth; there’s aggression and there’s over-aggression, he said. I wonder if he’d spoken to you about it and if you felt you had been over-aggressive?
I haven’t heard about it. I think we are here to race, so I don’t know. Maybe I have to talk to him later if it was a problem for him. As I said, we try to race, we try to defend our position, so there’s not much more to say.

Does the title aspect of it come in? You know you’re up against him for the title?
Well, I think you know, you’re not sitting in the car and voluntarily giving a place to the guy who is starting behind you. For sure, in that moment it doesn’t really matter how many points you have, you try to defend your position and try to get as far in front as you can. Obviously, looking back at Valencia, I had no chance to stay in front of Kimi (Räikkönen) at the start, he had some button to press and easily got me round the outside. I started on the dirty side and I knew that at the first and especially second corner it would be crucial to be on the inside and on the clean side, so I tried to get to the inside as early as possible. I think it was fine, so for me I don’t think there was any problem, but maybe I have to talk to Jenson later, I don’t know.

As a young driver, how do you see Barrichello’s motivation to keep racing and also winning, and do you see yourself in 15 years also motivated to be in Formula One?
As far as I’m concerned, I enjoy driving the car, so I can see the pleasure he feels every time he jumps into the car. But obviously ten years, 15 years is a long, long time. I don’t know. I think you have to do it step-by-step. If someone would have stepped up to Rubens’s car at his first or second Grand Prix and would have said ‘you will race more than 260 Grands Prix in Formula One’ it’s difficult to realise what it means or how long it is. I think you have to do it step-by-step and as long as you feel happy, as Sebastien said before, you don’t think about how young or how old you are. I think, as David (Coulthard) said last year or two years ago, as long as you are quick enough you are not too old and as soon as you are quick enough you are not too young any more. I don’t think age matters. At some point yes, probably, when you get grey and fat but he’s still in good shape.

Sebastian, you said you would welcome any weather we might have on Sunday but since this circuit suits your car, would you prefer an eventful dry race than your favourite rain?
In the end, our target here, as I said, is to get the maximum points, so our target is to win, so I would like to have winning conditions on Sunday. I don’t care if it’s wet or dry or both. In the end, you have to be quick, no matter what the conditions.