How was the Bahrain weekend for you?
It was positive to complete a race distance after what happened in Australia and Malaysia but obviously I would be happier if I had finished in the points. Qualifying wasn’t easy and in Q2 on my second run I could feel the car wasn’t handling as well as it had been earlier, probably because of the wind. It was disappointing not to make it to Q3 but I was strong in the race. I made up quite a few positions and it is encouraging to see the level of performance we have. Jarno drove another great race and it’s fantastic for the team to see how competitive we are this season.

How close were you to your first championship point for Panasonic Toyota Racing?
I was really close because I had the pace to beat Nico Rosberg in the final round of pit stops and get eighth place. Unfortunately I had a gearbox control problem which meant that we switched to back–up mode. Without that problem I think I would have been eighth.

Was it an advantage for you to get experience of the track in February?
I raced at Sakhir in GP2 and of course back in 2004 I did Friday practice, so I had some circuit experience, but the test in February was positive and it was good to arrive in Bahrain with some experience of the TF108 on this track. We did a race simulation so we had some data, although all the teams were up to speed and quick by the end of Friday anyway. Also, we were faced with different conditions every day, with the wind changing, so we had to adapt to that.

You have had three Grands Prix back in Formula 1 now, how are you settling in?
I’m enjoying it a lot. It’s not so different from other classes of racing but what you notice is that you have a really tight schedule compared to GP2 or Champ Car. There’s all the travelling of course and you see a lot of airports. But that’s the life of a Formula 1 driver. You couldn’t do it if you had a plane phobia!

Is the amount of testing in Formula 1 a big change compared to other series?
That is definitely true. In GP2 you are limited, and the same with Champ Car and Formula 3, so it is a lot of work now compared to those championships. You gather a lot of information in testing and you need to understand how to use that to move your set–up in the right direction. It is interesting to watch Jarno in testing because he has so much experience and when I watch him at work he just knows what he has to do. He is so professional and I am learning a lot.

So do you find yourself thinking about car development much more?
It’s strange because it is in your head 24 hours a day and all you can do is try to improve. It is not easy to progress even though so much development is going on. If you do make one tiny mistake and go in the wrong direction, you lose time. Formula 1 is more complex, the team is much bigger than GP2 and the car is more involved in terms of aerodynamics; it makes a huge difference when, for example, the wind changes. Then there are the grooved tyres which require a different approach to slicks, so there has been a lot of work to do but I am constantly developing and I’m pretty happy with how things are going so far.

Are you looking forward to testing at Barcelona before the European season starts?
Yes. It will be an important week because the pre–season Barcelona test was quite difficult for me as I struggled a bit with getting the tyres working in the conditions. But the temperatures were quite low and that won’t be the case when we go back. Jarno had a better feeling with the car and he set a fast lap time on the last day of pre–season testing. We have a lot of work to do at the test; we are working with some new aero parts – the first new aero package of the season – and the whole team is determined to keep pushing to close the gap on the top three teams.

How is the feeling within the team?
Everyone was really happy about the points in Malaysia and Jarno carried that through to Bahrain with another good result while I had a strong race, despite the gearbox problem towards the end. You could already see in Melbourne how good it was for motivation when we got both cars through to Q3 and then in Malaysia and Bahrain we have shown that our car is really competitive, so you can see that everyone is pushing as hard as possible. The pack behind McLaren, Ferrari and BMW is very tight but we seem to be best of the rest of the moment. The top three teams are not so far in front and it is so tight between Red Bull, Williams and us. The whole team is working really hard and feeling optimistic.