Kazuki's Column from France

Posted on Tuesday 03 Jul 2007 and tagged with kazuki, column.

I’m writing this column after my most enjoyable GP2 race of the season. I started Sunday’s race at Magny-Cours in 17th place and fought my way through the field to finish sixth. I overtook a lot of cars and really enjoyed it. Overall, though, my French Grand Prix weekend was quite frustrating. My DAMS Dallara was competitive, as I proved in qualifying when I was faster than my team-mate Nicolas Lapierre and lined up ninth on the grid. But I was unable to convert that potential into a good result because Saturday’s feature race was quite chaotic. I lost a couple of places at the start because I was too cautious and I was unable to make those positions back because the Safety Car was deployed before the end of the opening lap. There had been two separate accidents: the two iSport cars clashed leaving the grid and Ernesto Viso had a big accident halfway round the opening lap. I was just ahead of Ernesto when he went off and he actually overtook me in mid-air, which was very scary. I was very relieved to hear that he was okay. Everyone dived into the pits when the Safety Car came out. I had to queue behind my team-mate, which cost me a bit of time, and I then had a slipping clutch as well. By the time the team had mended the problem, I was a lap down on the leaders, and then the race was stopped while Ernesto was extricated from his car. At the re-start I knew that my best chance of scoring a point was to set the fastest lap. I tried to do that on the last lap of the race, but Roldan Rodriguez beat my best lap by 0.001s, which was annoying! Sunday’s race was much better for me and it was good to score some championship points. I had a good dice with Bruno Senna in the closing laps and I now want to carry the momentum from that race into next weekend’s races at Silverstone. I have driven on the track only once before, when I tested there for AT&T Williams a couple of weeks ago, and it left a very good impression on me. There are lots of fast corners, which I enjoy, and it's a long lap. I’m aiming to score more points. Until next time, Kazuki