After the disappointment of Monaco, it was great to get back on the podium at the Austrian Grand Prix support round of the GP2 Series. Not only that, but to do it from ninth on the grid, and set fastest lap, showed what fantastic pace my DAMS car has got.

That first race, on Saturday, was really the only time that we managed to show that pace. Free practice on Friday had been good – OK we weren’t the quickest, but we knew from the runs we were doing that everything was looking really competitive. But then in qualifying during the afternoon it all went a bit wrong.

I didn’t have the strongest first run – it wasn’t panic stations, because we knew the car was still fast. Then I went out on my second – and last – set of tyres, and we were looking strong, but unfortunately I got baulked in the last sector of my best lap. And as you can imagine, with the super-soft tyres we were using as our ‘option’ this weekend, they don’t really last more than a lap.

I lost six tenths in that final sector, and I was only six tenths from pole… That was really a shame, because the car was very fast. Even so, we were confident that if everything went smoothly in the race we could challenge from ninth on the grid.

We chose to start on the ‘prime’ tyre, which was the medium this weekend. When we’ve qualified higher up this year we’ve had to go for the less-risky strategy of starting on the option, because when you start on the prime you leave yourself open to losing out under safety cars. But from where I was starting it was worth going for the prime. The DAMS boys had calculated that would be the fastest way to run the race, and when I saw the guys at the front on the option I thought we were looking really good.

Unfortunately I got a bad start, and I was about 13th into Turn 1, but I had a good first lap and got back up to ninth. Then I got my head down and started passing people who were on the same strategy as me. Sure enough, the guys who’d started on options made an early stop, so by the time I caught my team-mate Pierre Gasly he was leading the race.

I got stuck behind Pierre for three or four laps because he’d picked up some front-wing damage early in the race. It cost me a fair amount of time – probably not a race-winning difference, but I think I would have been second without that happening. But that’s that – he wasn’t going to move over! Eventually I got past him and then it was a case of pumping in about 20 qualifying laps, with the medium tyre working really well.

I have to say a big thanks to DAMS, because we had the fastest pit stop out of everybody. I lost out to Alexander Rossi and Nobuharu Matsushita – who’d made earlier stops – as I came out of the pits, but I was confident that once my tyres were up to temperature I’d be very fast. It didn’t take me long to dispatch Rossi, but Matsushita had really good pace on his primes and it took quite a lot to pass him – I finally made it by on the penultimate lap for third.

That was really nice to get such a good result from where I started, and earning fastest lap was also very important for us as a confidence booster.

From sixth on the grid, I was looking to go in and win the reversed-grid race on Sunday, but I stalled at the start. It was the same thing as Saturday, but that time I got lucky and didn’t stall. Maybe myself and the team were a little bit arrogant that it was just a glitch, but hindsight is a fine thing. Really, we should have changed things and we got bitten in the rear for not doing that.

I was nearly a lap down, and could only get back to 21st place by the end. The fact that I again got fastest lap just makes it even more heartbreaking. At the end of the day it’s all about going out hard and fighting – we’ve got loads of things to learn in this championship, but one thing we’ve always had, and which is getting stronger and stronger, is the speed. Once it all comes together and everything gels we’ll be winning on a regular basis.

So now it’s back to England for the next two weekends. The next GP2 round is supporting the British Grand Prix at Silverstone – a track I’ve always gone well on – but before that I’m driving a 25-year-old Williams FW13B at the Goodwood Festival of Speed. I’m hugely looking forward to that!