De la Rosa: Bahrain heroics hard to repeat

De la Rosa qualified eighth on his return to racing action in France and, confident that his car will be even better in the race, is eyeing moving up the order to take some important points.

And that could mean him putting on the kind of brave overtaking moves that characterized his fifth place finish at Sakhir last year when he stood in for Juan Pablo Montoya.

"For sure I will try," he said speaking about his chances of more spectacular efforts in the race. "But I must say this circuit is a different story to Bahrain.

"Sakhir is a much easy track to overtake on, but here you have Turn 3 which limits how close you can get to the guy in front. But we do have a good race car, it is going to be very hot tomorrow and we have the right tyre for the race."

De la Rosa is pretty pleased with the way his weekend has gone - claiming that qualifying was probably the biggest hurdle he had to overcome.

"It has gone pretty well, pretty smooth," he said. "I know the car, I know the team and that makes my work much easier.

"But for me qualifying was not easy. I must say the new qualifying format is pretty interesting. It doesn't allow you to make any mistakes, especially the last lap of Q2 and the last lap of Q3 have to be perfect."

And although the hot conditions expected for today's event are expected to test de la Rosa's race fitness to the maximum, the man himself believes it is not going to be as hard for him as testing.

"The good thing about being a test driver is that whenever you are required you are very fit," he explained. "That is the good thing about myself. Last week I was testing three days in a row in Jerez, and for me it was much harder testing three days in Jerez testing tyres for here than coming and doing this race. That's much, much tougher."