I woke up at 9.45 with the alarm, got dressed and everything, and then had some breakfast: I brought my own with me when I came here, because the breakfast is crap! I brought some crisp breads and some tins of mackerel and tomato. This what I eat at home, and I eat it because it's a lot better than eating whatever it is they have in the hotel! Okay, I know you think it's weird, but to eat one croissant or something for me is not so good! So I ate in my room, and then we went to the track around 10.30: we are staying in town, not near the track, maybe 40 minutes away. When we got to the circuit I watched the F1 free practice and then spoke to a guy from Lappidoc, to see if I can join them. This is a guy who does training programmes and this sort of thing: physical and mental and everything. He's from Australia, and he works with some of the other drivers: he worked with Hamilton and Vettel, and now he's the chief of all this. So we were speaking, and maybe I can work with them. I am pretty fit already: when I'm home I train every day, 2 times a day. In the morning I do a light run just to get the day going, and then in the afternoon I do the gym one day for strength, and the next day I do more endurance things. And at the circuit, before I get in the car, I run or do some exercises just to get going, just up and down the paddock. Before lunch I worked with the team to try and find the right strategies, and to get advice: the tyres are new, so you don't really know what will happen. I work together with Romain, all together with the engineers. It's sometimes hard to have a teammate with so much experience, but I am new and he can see different things, so it is also a big help. Then we all had lunch. I don't bring anything for that: the lunch here is quite good! I watched qualy for Formula One, and then it was time for the race. I don't really have any superstitions, like some guys: sometimes I think okay, it's better if I get in on this side or that side, and if it's okay then I will do it again, but when a race goes not so good next time it's time for a change! I still get nervous before I go and sit in the car: now a bit is because GP2 is new for me, and a bit just happens anyway. I try to take away the nervousness by speaking crap, like I just talk about the grid girls or something! My engineer will speak about different strategies or whatever, asks how everything is and do I have a problem, things like that. And after we finish I start speaking about the grid girls, and I think sometimes he thinks maybe I'm just going mad or something! I have to do this though: it's just to get me calm, and to be a bit funny or whatever. Today I started P21. What can I see from there? I see a lot of cars! I can see the lights, but also we had a light further back on the side. Waiting there I try to really pump myself up: I start screaming a bit, to just psyche myself up, and then I am just focused on the lights. When the lights go, I go: I am focused on what is going on, but also I'm a bit aggressive, but not too aggressive and I know what I'm doing obviously, so I don't crash or whatever. When I go into that corner, my vision kind of opens out: I am focused on straight in front, but I also see what's going on because I see like a movement in the corner of my eye, so I know when I have to move a little like this (move his hands right) It's not like I'm looking all around, because then I would go backwards: I can just ... sense it maybe, and just see a little. I have to see how the start is going, but usually you want to be on the inside: sometimes there are too many cars going inside, so if I just brake later I can go around a group of cars. Today was okay: I stopped really early to see if we could pass some others later, and I was about P16 or something like that, caught up to a group of cars who were fighting, and I passed all of them and then I was P11: that was great! But then my front tyre was going off a lot and I didn't have anything left, so I lost a lot of time and had to pit again, I think 5 or 6 laps to the end. We put on a good set of rear tyres the first time: before the pitstop I had some oversteer, and when we changed the oversteer went away and I started to get understeer all the time, so I think on these tyres we have maybe to change all four tyres, like Bird did. I don't know where I finished, P17 or something like that! After the race how it feels depends on where I finished, and how the race was: like today I had a good kick from the fights, so I was quite happy, but disappointed also because the tyres went away so much. If I have a really disappointing race with nothing going on I'm like bleh, shit, what's going on! Why do I race? Obviously I want to win, of course, to win and be the best, but I also love to be racing just for racing, fighting on the track and to do good manoeuvres: I love to be there for that. The best thing would be to win the first race and then start the second race in P8, and then fight all the way for the second win. I like a lot the fights, and to have really close races – I love to do that! And after that you go and talk to the team, have a debrief, talk about what happened, what we can do better, and what we can do in the next race, and I write down how the car was, before the pitstop, after the pitstop, and we go through what we're going to do in the evening. Now I will go and eat, and we will come back and have a meeting, and then I can go to the hotel and get some sleep. Today was both a good day and a bad day: it was a very fun race, a very good race, some good fighting, but in the end it was really bad that the tyres didn't last long so I couldn't keep going. But we'll learn, and next time will be better.
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