We’ve had a difficult weekend in Russia, but I’ve come away as almost champion. Not quite, but it’s looking pretty good for me to wrap things up in the final round in Abu Dhabi.

We were struggling with the car at the new Sochi track. In a way, that shows what a brilliant job the Carlin team have done all year – it’s the first weekend where we’ve not had the car that we wanted. We’ve been fast all year, but we didn’t have the pace this time.

I’d learned the circuit in the simulator but it was definitely a lot different to what everyone thought it would be. All down the field, there was no one who expected it to be as fast as it was, and I think that caught a lot of people by surprise.

It wasn’t too bad in free practice. I was sixth fastest. We were missing a little bit of pace but when we put everything together we thought we’d be in the hunt for pole position. It was just a matter of getting a clear run and doing a good job.

We were fast in qualifying, but didn’t really put it together. I had one shot at the end of qualifying, and I was on a lap that would definitely have put me on pole position. I was just a few corners away from completing it, but I locked up at Turn 13 and blew it. That was really annoying, because it was one of the few mistakes I’ve made all year.

That meant I would be starting from seventh, but with my main title rival Richie Stanaway starting from the pit lane I was still looking good. Championship-wise, without question I needed to be in the top eight, because that would put me in a good position for the second race, where the top eight start in the reverse order of where they finished race one.

I finished seventh and got myself a front-row start, but there was no pleasure in that. We just did the job we needed to do. It was really difficult to overtake, and to be honest our pace wasn’t fantastic so that made it even harder. I was struggling to make progress.

The plan was to try and stay ahead of my closest title rivals in race two and wrap up the championship. I made a really good start, but the Arden cars made their signature fliers and I was down to third by the first corner. I was sitting nicely there, but I didn’t really have an answer to Dean Stoneman and Marvin Kirchhofer: they were a lot quicker and they came past me.

Kirchhofer got past Jann Mardenborough and then Stoneman did as well. I was trying to make a clean pass on Mardenborough but he was being very aggressive and not giving me any options.

So I ended up taking fifth, and with Kirchhofer and Stoneman finishing in front of me that keeps them mathematically in the hunt. I’m 47 points in front now with only 48 available in Abu Dhabi. It’s annoying and a bit frustrating, but we’ll be going there not really questioning that we’re going to win it. Our main focus will be on the teams’ championship – Carlin really deserve it and it would be lovely if they won it.

It was nice after the race, because I got asked to be the pundit on BBC Radio 5 Live’s coverage of the Grand Prix with Jack Nicholls. That was really good and I enjoyed it a lot – maybe when I’ve retired from racing I’ll get a job doing that! All my strategy predictions came true, so I was pretty proud of myself!