I’m quite excited to be going back to Bahrain for this coming weekend’s penultimate round of the GP2 Series. It’s where we kicked off the 2015 season so, as my engineer at DAMS called it, it’s a bit of an end-of-year exam – we can see what lessons we’ve learned, and come back and try and do well, not only here but the following weekend at the finale in Abu Dhabi.

If we rewind to the first round, I had a chance to win that. My speed was very good but youthful exuberance put paid to a decent result. We’ve done our analysis, and although our approach won’t be too different to earlier in the year we have a bit more maturity to take in.

It’s been a few weeks since the last GP2 race supporting the Russian Grand Prix. During that time I went to the United States Grand Prix in Austin as part of my role with the Williams-Mercedes Formula 1 team. There I was, thinking it would be nice to go and watch some F1 in the Texas sunshine in October, and it turned out wet and miserable, just like the old Formula Renault Winter Series days at Snetterton and Pembrey at the start of my career, so that was a bit hard to take! Honestly, I’d never seen rain like it, and it was very surprising that they even ran the third free practice session and qualifying. But it was a really good experience to spend another weekend with the team and I learned a lot more about the workings of F1.

But for now I’m really excited to get racing again after a few weeks off. I’ve got a gearbox kart I keep at Whilton Mill, so I was out in that last week. It’s always good to keep your fitness up and just keep your eye in – and of course it’s fun too!

I’ve also been spending a lot of time on the simulator at Williams trying to prepare for the end of the year. It seems strange, bearing in mind my career has been mostly European-based up to now, to be getting towards the end of the calendar year and for everything to be starting to gear up again.

It’s gearing up in another way as well. This Bahrain GP2 round supports the World Endurance Championship instead of F1, and this time we’re racing on the Friday and Saturday instead of the Saturday and Sunday. This time on the Sunday the WEC teams are trying some new drivers and I’ve been invited to have a run with Toyota, who won the championship last year! Last Friday I was down at the team’s Cologne base for a seat-fit and a go on the sim, and I can’t tell you how much I’m looking forward to driving the TS040 HYBRID. To be fair I know a reasonable amount about WEC as Toyota’s driver Alex Wurz is part of my management team – he’s just announced his retirement from driving but don’t jump to conclusions and assume I’m going to take his place. I’m still fully focused on GP2 and any F1 opportunities for next year, but I do take my hat off to all the WEC teams for giving us young guys a chance – I think a lot of them have realised recently how good people at GP2 and similar levels are, and likewise we regard it as a very exciting area of the sport.

But now I have to forget about that until after GP2 finishes on Saturday. The big focus is on the peculiarities of the Bahrain track – it’s not particularly high grip but the circuit layout lends itself to eating rear tyres. It’s really stop-start, with not a lot of fast corners but plenty of turning and traction zones – and that’s what the rears really don’t like. Even so, we showed our speed there earlier in the year so it’s time to kick off the season-ending races on a high.