Nico's Budapest Blog: Sunday

Posted on Monday 27 Jul 2009 and tagged with nico, budapest, hungary.

There are many positives to take from today’s race. The FW31 was competitive all weekend, I finished fourth, and might have challenged for third had I not lost a lot of time at my first pitstop, and I moved into fifth place in the World Championship.

One of the most significant aspects of the race, however, was the effectiveness of the KERS-powered cars away from the line. Even if the Ferraris and McLarens start behind you on the grid, there’s almost nothing you can do to stop them passing you into Turn One. It’s like they have a turbo-charger on them! Raikkonen was past me before I knew it and I had to be very aggressive to keep Kovalainen behind.

Our engineers reckon Valencia will be an ideal KERS circuit as well, so it will no doubt be another exciting run to the first corner there. I’ll just have to qualify as far ahead of the KERS cars as possible and hope that I have enough of an advantage before the braking area.

In the meantime, however, we have a four-week break in the calendar. I’m staying in Budapest tonight, where I’ll party with a few friends, and then head to Ibiza for a holiday. I’ll do some training while I’m there because we can expect Valencia to be hot. Cockpit temperatures were in excess of 60 degrees last year, which is unpleasant. Fitness is crucial.

Have a good month and catch up soon,

Nico