With the way the GP2 Series calendar is at the moment, I haven’t even had chance to go home since last weekend’s round at the Hungaroring before we head to Hockenheim for the next event.
I flew from Budapest to France, and then got the train to Le Mans so that I could be down at the DAMS team base preparing for what will funnily enough be our first race together in Germany.
That’s because the German Grand Prix wasn’t on the schedule last year so there was no GP2 round either, but this year it’s back and I’ve got to say I’m quite happy about that. Hockenheim has been a good track for me in the past, even going back to my British Formula 3 season in 2012 when we went there to do a couple of rounds of the European championship and I managed to get on the podium against all the big teams. I’ve never won there, but I’ve come pretty darn close a lot of times now. In the season I won the GP3 title I was focusing very much on points and came second and third, so it’s definitely a happy hunting ground for me.
It’s got a mix of everything, with long straights, very hard braking into tight corners and also some fast turns. I don’t think it’s the most technical track, which means it’s always very very close – and that makes it even harder to get an advantage. It’s a good proving ground for the car though – if you get it in the sweet spot you can be really quick. You can be almost effortlessly fast, but things have to be working your way.
After a bit of a dip in our fortunes, we came away from the Hungaroring confident we’d turned a corner with the car. To be honest, the main aim is to carry on that feeling and continue working as hard as always. We’ve certainly been cracking on at the workshop, and as I write this on Tuesday it’s at the end of a long day working with the team, looking forward to my dinner and getting the flight out to Germany with the boys tomorrow!
I have to say we’ve always been quite confident. Even through the bad times we have to believe in ourselves and that’s one of our main strengths as a team. I’ve got a lot of faith in DAMS and we’re pushing on as always to maximise everything we can this weekend.
We’ll be using the medium Pirelli as the prime tyre and the soft as the option. I think that’s quite a decent combination for Hockenheim but, the way things have been this season for every team, who knows whether that will produce a high-degradation or low-deg event? We’ve all found a lot of things different this year to what we expected. We won’t know what we’ve really got until we do a long run in free practice. One thing for certain in GP2 this year and that there’s not a lot that’s being replicated from previous experience!
Our weekend in Germany comes at the end of a very hectic July, with four race events over the five weekends during the month. After this we’ve got quite a long break until we’re back in action at Spa, so a good result to take into that break would be nice, wouldn’t it? We’ve just got to try and do our best to make that happen.
