that makes qualifying even more important than usual..."
As I write this I’m on my way with the DAMS team from their workshop in Le Mans to the Hungaroring for the next round of the GP2 Series, looking forward to stepping into the furnace! The temperatures at the moment are in the high thirties and even low forties, so you can imagine what it’s going to be like cocooned in a racing car in all my fireproof gear – pretty horrible.
As I’ve mentioned previously, I always spend a couple of days at DAMS before we travel together to the next race, but before that I’ve had a couple of weeks since Silverstone with the Williams Formula 1 team. As usual it’s been great. I had a week with the windtunnel people after Silverstone, and followed that with a week in the marketing department. I’m getting so much info about what makes a Formula 1 team work – now I just want to drive one of the cars again!
For now it’s GP2 though. We had a good run at Silverstone if you look at our pace, and as usual we go to a race in confidence. Everything being normal, with nothing unexpected happening, we should be fast. At the Hungaroring it will be all about putting it together at the right time and delivering at the right moment.
Tyres will be a key factor here. Recently we’ve had Monaco, where qualifying was wet, followed by the Red Bull Ring and Silverstone, so that was three races in a row where the influence of the tyres was fairly non-existent. But now we go to a race where we need to save those Pirellis quite a lot.
The circuit is full of long, medium-speed corners, and it will be baking hot, and we’ll be using the soft-compound tyre, so put those factors all together and you’re going to see a lot of degradation. Usually we can get two hot laps out of each of our two sets of tyres in qualifying, but I think in Hungary it’ll be a one-lap shootout. Those same things that affect tyre wear are going to make it very hard for the drivers too. The two races this weekend are going to be very physical for sure, and I’m glad I’ve done a lot of preparation over the past couple of weeks. We always do quite a lot of training to be ready for a race like this.
I’ve raced at the Hungaroring in GP3 and before that in Formula Renault, and I always seem to go quite well there. I did a wild-card race there in Formula Renault Eurocup in 2011 and finished sixth – it’s funny looking back, because I was behind Daniil Kvyat and Stoffel Vandoorne, who were doing the full season, and ahead of Carlos Sainz Jr and Will Stevens. Look at where we all are now! Also I was on the front row there in GP3 last year, so it’s a track I’m comfortable on, even if it’s not a classic to drive.
Most important, though, is it’s so hard to overtake there. That makes qualifying even more important than usual. We need to focus on repeating the results we had at the start of the year, sticking it up there. The last few weekends we’ve proved what we can do in the races, so we just need to do the job in qualifying and carry it on from there.
