Frankly Franchitti

I felt dizzy after Friday practice, and I had a pretty big headache, which I put down to the bumps... It was intense, it's a bloody fast place.

The problem is with the cars. It's not with the track. The track's not the problem. Our cars could be worked to slow down on the track, which is what I guess we'll do and come back.

We tested before the season and did 226mph straight away, on my third lap I think. Whatever, it was easy flat. But I don't think anyone expected us to gain so much in terms of speed between then and now. The whole thing is just progress. On Saturday all of a sudden my team mate Paul Tracy is doing 236, which is bloody quick. That's how fast things are developing.

People ask what does a lap of Texas feel like, and why's it different to other tracks? We're use to lateral Gs, but here the banking means you get a vertical load too. There's no real way to describe the feeling. It's like when you're on a rollercoaster and you hit the bottom... But really multiplied... I've never experienced anything like it.

It was quite an amazing feeling. You can actually feel the blood draining to your legs, and your organs shifting towards the right side of your body.

It's not that the cars are too quick, but the problem is that on the banking , the drivers were experiencing things we'd never experienced before. They even had advisors from NASA. And they were saying that humans cannot withstand that for prolonged periods of time. We were into the unknown. We were at the point where people normally pass out through to prolonged exposure to G forces. It could have happened. All the drivers are athletes, but these kind of G forces are a different thing. Each different person was having their own symptoms, and they were getting different effects.

I think it was a brave decision to make by CART - it would have been easier to put the drivers out and see what would have happened. They made a brave choice and definitely it was the right one.

It's a weird place. Anyone can drive round there flat in qualifying, it's flat, nailed. Then over the weekend it got a bit warmer, and we didn't quite get the car set-up dead on for qualifying. But it's so close and a tenth of a second would have put us fifth or something, but we didn't quite get that right. But in traffic we were hanging on, but that's part of the game, we expected that. The problem was the longer you went, then you ran into these problems with the G forces.

People are going to say that it's CART's fault. But at the end of the day for them to make that decision was bloody difficult, and they have to be applauded for doing that. Joe Heitzler, and those guys, you have to say that was brave, and 'good on you'.

I went back to Scotland straight after Long Beach for a few days with my family. My brother Marino won the British GT Championship race at Snetterton. He's sharing a car with Kelvin Burt, and they did really well. The trouble with Snetterton is that it's cold and wet. I guess I should've known better really.

I was pleased to see Montoya on the podium in Spain, That was mega, and Villeneuve too. I didn't get to see the race live (meetings about Texas etc...) but I saw qualifying, and that was disappointing for Juan as he ended up 12th - I guess in the race he was the usual Juan.

Another thing I must say is the news about the loss of Michele Alboreto. That was just devastating. He was such a great guy. In the mid-80s when I was growing up, he was the man at Ferrari. Then I was fortunate enough to race against him in the ITC in 1996. It's such a shame. He enjoyed his racing, and for that to happen to him... It brings you back to earth with a big bump I can tell you. There were a lot of people feeling the effect of that over the weekend.

But we race Nazareth next. I'm going to Indy this week to do some work for the team. We ran well at Nazareth in 1999 when we had the low downforce package, so just hope we can go there this year and score some decent points.