Q&A with Heikki Kovalainen

Heikki Kovalainen take some time out from his busy schedule prior to the Malaysian Grand Prix, a "home race" for his Malaysian-owned team, to answer a few questions on the season.

Having been forced to retire after 39 laps at the season-opening grand prix in Australia, Heikki Kovalainen is hoping his Team Lotus can improve in front of an enthusiastic home crowd at this weekend's Malaysia Grand Prix.

qTony Fernandes, your team principal, has described the Team Lotus T128 as having "Malaysian blood" because it prefers hotter conditions. Is that a fair assessment?

aYeah, I think so. The main issue we had in Melbourne was that we struggled to get the tyres to work at their maximum in the temperatures that we had. Whether the hot weather will help us to move further up the grid or not, we don't know. But it should help us at least close the gap on the cars ahead of us.

With Fernandes being the owner of Malaysian-based Air Asia, this is seen as Team Lotus's home race. You arrived here a week early and have been busy with promotional work. Does it feel any different to other races?

Last week was reasonably easy because it was mostly fitness work and I didn't have a lot of appearances. But this week, since Monday, I have had seven or eight different appearances. I have met a lot of different people.

And have the fans been receptive to the team?

Absolutely. Every event we go to there are a lot of fans for us and local people seem to be enjoying our team and even, for me personally, I have been getting a lot of people sending me messages on Twitter and Facebook. I have met people when I have gone to eat some ice cream in the city. I have met fans in restaurants. It's fantastic.

Do you feel the car has notably improved since last year?

I feel the team has gone forward in terms of structure, but everything is step by step: we still need a better facility, we need more people, the wind tunnel we are using is not good enough, but we are making the right steps for this year. We just need to be patient.

How close is the team to finishing in the points for the first time?

The target is to do it here. Last season, we came close a couple of times to scoring a point, but breaking that top 10 is very tough. Generally, we have closed the gap on the cars ahead of us. Melbourne did not give us a true picture of our position; it will be closer here. The target for us is to catch Force India, because Toro Rosso, Williams and Sauber all seem to have taken steps forward. But we just have to remember we are a relatively young team.

As a driver, how does the ongoing legal battle regarding the Lotus name affect you?

For me it does not make any difference to my life. When I interact with the team, the only thing I am concerned about is that it doesn't affect our performance and our development of the car. So far I have not seen any signs of that.