What can I say? There I was, comfortably leading the GP2 Series feature race at Sochi and looking set for my third win of the season. I’d done all the hard work – qualifying on pole, getting a great start, making a terrific restart, staying in front at the pit stops. Everything was done, and I undid it. I outbraked myself, went off and took a wheel off the car. I’m gutted, absolutely gutted, because I threw it away.

It was an odd weekend. We had the aftermath of a diesel spillage on the track the previous evening to deal with in Friday practice, so the track was constantly improving. Right from the off my DAMS car was consistently up there, and we were getting quicker and quicker. Stoffel Vandoorne was mega-fast, but you never know whether that’s just because he’s got the experience to get everything out of it, because the field always closes up in qualifying.

Then it rained for qualifying, which I wasn’t too disappointed about… I got pole position and it was a mega feeling. I had Stoffel right in front of me on the track and I actually thought he was pulling away from me, but I knew I was on a good lap so I didn’t try and do anything crazy. It ended up being just quicker than him, and that was enough.

My start to the race was definitely my best of the year. It was really clean, and to make matters even better for me Stoffel got a bad one. So that gave me a really nice clean run through Turn 2 – behind me all hell broke loose and there was a red flag, and that was really frustrating because I was so fired up.

There was quite a long delay before the restart, and the daylight was fading, so we only had time for 12 more laps of racing. My restart was good and within three laps I was something like four seconds ahead. At this point, my engineer really wanted to make sure that we pitted early so that there was no risk of any traffic in the pit lane blocking me in when I wanted to rejoin, and that way I could get back out on track and just put in the laps, and retake the lead when the guys in front pitted.

The stop was a little bit slow and I lost a bit of time, so that meant that when Alexander Rossi rejoined a couple of laps later he was in front. But obviously he was on cold tyres, so I thought it should be a routine pass. I went to the outside at Turn 3, made it stick, and put the hammer down while he was on cold tyres.

Then, a few laps later, disaster. Not only did the retirement ruin my first race, but of course it spoiled my chances in the second too, because I was going to have to start from 20th on the grid. Actually, I’m pretty pleased with the progress I made. The field spread out quite quickly so it was just about picking my way through one by one without worrying that everyone was in a huge bunch. I managed to finish 10th, which is about all you can do at Sochi when you start from down there.

Now I’d like to forget about what happened and move on. OK, there are a few weeks before the penultimate round in Bahrain, but I’ve definitely got enough to keep me busy, starting with flying out to the United States Grand Prix at Austin with the Williams-Mercedes team next week. That’s something to look forward to while I work on coming back strong for the last two GP2 rounds.