Fast Frog

So I'm back! And I can tell you that it's a really great feeling. Nearly two months away from a racing car is enough to send a driver mad, and I was really itching to get back in the cockpit before Hockenheim.

I didn't know until late on Wednesday evening that I was going to be driving, which is kind of late notice, but I had to get the all-clear from the doctors that my back would be strong enough to put up with the strains of driving a GP2 car, before they were happy to say yes.

They're pretty fast machines, you know, with a lot of grip and cornering speed and really stiff suspension, so you need to be in good shape to drive one hard over a race distance. The fastest cars are not far off the slowest F1 cars, so that gives you some idea of what we're doing.

Anyway, after doing 60 laps of Magny-Cours in a Formula Renault car, I was given a thorough check-over by the medics and they said I was ready to go. That was such a relief. Racing drivers are pretty impatient guys. We don't like to be waiting around for something to happen, even if we're injured and have to wait for stuff to heal up.

I was glad to come back at Hockenheim, because it's a track I know well and it's pretty smooth, with no bad kerbs. It was a good place to ease my way back up to racing speed without risking another injury.

It took me a couple of laps last Friday to 'get my eye in' - I think that's the phrase! - but then it all felt pretty cool: nice and natural again, with a real buzz from being back in a fast racing car.

It was a shame, though, that we came across our qualifying problem again - something that we've struggled with all year. For some reason, whether it's chassis set-up or aerodynamics, we haven't been able to get the rear tyres to work at their best in qualifying, which is always compromising our start positions. The good side is that in the race we're nearly always in good shape with our tyres, but we're often starting from too far back.

That was definitely the case in the 40-lap feature race at Hockenheim, where it was hard to make any progress, especially after a bad start when the engine bogged down as the tyres 'dug in'.

The sprint race on Sunday was much better. I went from 20th to seventh in 23 laps and I was right on Gimmi Bruni's gearbox in the final lap. I finished just 0.2 seconds behind him, and I'd have had him with another lap or two, because he was beginning to struggle.

Still, I can take some satisfaction from being in the fight at the end after two months out of action, and it has given me a lot of confidence for Budapest this weekend.

It's a tight, twisty track, but I really like it, because you can attack quite hard. It will be super-hot, I'm sure, because it nearly always is and that will be a test for my fitness after not having been able to train as hard as I would like for quite a while. But Hockenheim was better than I thought in that respect, so I think we'll be OK.

The main thing I'm looking forward to is being able to attack again, with my back strong and - we hope - my Arden car in good shape after working on some set-up changes in Germany. I'll be going flat-out again, I can promise you that. A bloc!

Salut,