Fast Frog

Bonjour mes amis,

It's not all tyres, wings and wheel-to-wheel action when you're a racing driver, you know. Occasionally you get a chance to do something a little different, and that happened to me at the Nurburgring last weekend.

The Belgian TV guys needed an extra commentator for their coverage of the Grand Prix, and they asked me if I'd be interested in sitting in their commentary box and doing some analysis for them.

My GP2 commitments were over for the weekend, so I was really happy to help them out. And you know what? I really enjoyed it. I'd done a little bit of commentary before on F3 and stuff like that, but doing it on a Formula One race was a lot more intense.

But it was really exciting, and I think they appreciated the different observations I was able to give them about track conditions, strategy and what the drivers were doing.

I'd like to think I've got a lot of years' racing left in me, but maybe one day when I hang up my helmet, I could find a role in a commentary booth. It's certainly a good buzz.

But, as I say, that's a long way off! Right now all I'm thinking about is this year's GP2 championship and getting a good result for myself and for Arden.

Last weekend at the Nurburgring was OK. We had another podium and took nine points away from the weekend, so it's really close now at the top of the championship between me, Nelson Piquet and Lewis Hamilton.

Lewis had a good weekend, but Nelson had a bad one, so that's really evened things out between the three of us. There's only two points between us!

What I'm hoping for now is to have a really strong weekend in Spain, starting with a good qualifying position for the feature race, and taking it from there. Lewis did that last weekend and Nelson did the week before, and I'm definitely ready to do it myself now!

Both those guys have had bad weekends, though - Lewis in Valencia and Nelsinho in Germany - and the good thing about my season so far is that we've always been able to come away with good points, despite having a few problems.

I know that when we get it right from the very beginning of the weekend, we'll be in a very strong position.

Qualifying is one issue we have to sort out: the car has terrific race pace, but we're struggling to get the best out of it in quali.

It's difficult in GP2, because we only have half an hour of free practice and no testing between races, so it's not as if you can try loads and loads of different set-up ideas. But we're nearly there and the car is basically very good, so it's just a question of a bit of fine-tuning, I think.

I'm looking forward to Barcelona this weekend. The atmosphere was great there last year, and we went very well there in testing over the winter - we were consistently in the top-five fastest, so it's a track I'm approaching with confidence.

The main thing to watch is tyre wear. Turn 3 kills both the left tyres because it's so long and fast, but it's a great corner, as are the last two before the main straight. They're a real challenge, but I love fast corners, so it's definitely a circuit you can be excited about.

Now we just have to go and get the result!

Salut,