AT&T Williams F1

Solid Start to the Season The AT&T WilliamsF1 Team’s new car, the FW29, is a significant step forward from last year and my seventh place in the Australian Grand Prix proved it. But what made the result so satisfying was that things hadn’t looked so promising after qualifying. During Q1 and Q2 I lacked confidence in the car. It was very twitchy on the limit, which made it very difficult to drive. My best lap time placed me 12th on the grid and I expected Sunday’s 58-lap race to be difficult. But my engineers did a fantastic job overnight on Saturday because the car was much nicer to drive in the race. I set the fifth fastest lap, only 0.4s shy of the McLarens, and maximised every on-track opportunity. The team also did a great job with the strategy and the pitstops, so we can reflect on a job well done. Off-track, it was great to be back in Australia. I love the country and the people, and Melbourne and Sydney are fantastic cities. One Australian I’ve long-admired is the swimmer Ian Thorpe, the ‘Thorpedo’. He won five Olympic Gold Medals before retiring last year at the age of 24. That’s a phenomenal record for someone so young because swimming is a very demanding sport. I used to swim a lot as part of my training regime and quite enjoyed it. But, unlike the ‘Thorpedo’, I sink like a stone when I’m in water, which makes it not that much fun and I’ve started doing other forms of exercise, such as cycling and rock climbing. The latter is particularly good for upper body strength, which is important when you’re driving an F1 car because you are subjected to very high g-forces. I’ll continue to work on my physical fitness during the three-week break between the Australian and Malaysian Grands Prix. Malaysia is one of the toughest races of the year because it’s hot and humid, so it’s important to be well prepared. I sweat a lot when I’m in the car, which is something that I’ve inherited from my father. He always got out of a car looking very red in the face, and I’m the same! To help me acclimatise to the heat, I’m now going to the island of Koh Samui in Thailand. I’m spending a week there with my girlfriend and a couple of other drivers, Lewis Hamilton and Adrian Sutil. It should be fun because Lewis and I go back a long way. We were team-mates in karting and followed each other through the junior ranks of the sport. We’re very competitive in everything that we do and it will no doubt be like that in Thailand, but I’m looking forward to it. There is then a three-day test session at Sepang at the end of March, which will be very useful for the AT&T WilliamsF1 Team because we can continue to develop the FW29 ahead of the Malaysian GP. We will have several new parts to try out, so I’m hopeful that we will be able to keep up the momentum we gained Down Under.