It’s been both fantastic and exciting today. It’s been a year since I’ve driven a Formula 1 car, eight months since I’ve driven anything on track. I took the day step-by-step, I just kept my focus and kept calm. I was really happy with the day. The team have helped me with everything, the engineers did a great job talking me through things, and the mechanics have done a great job as well. The only set-back was in FP1, we had a lock-up that damaged my tires, I couldn’t do any further running. I kept my cool and we just went into FP2 and got through our run plan. Tomorrow I’ll make another step, slowly turn up the volume, and push when it comes to qualifying then the race.

Well, it’s certainly a very short track with a lot of traffic – it’s very narrow as well, very bumpy. It’s certainly a challenge. Unfortunately, we’re not fast enough, either on the normal track or this new one. We’ve also got to work on the balance of the car, it’s not just the straights where we’re slow – we have to work on the corners. We’ve got to try and manage all that. I think Pietro (Fittipaldi) has done really well today. It’s a big ask to be thrown into a car just a couple of days before a race weekend with no testing. I think he’s gotten up to speed really well. Hopefully he’s enjoying it.

The combination of the two sessions were very good. In FP1 Pietro (Fittipaldi) lost a few laps – he flat-spotted the tires, so he couldn’t go out anymore. For sure though, FP2 was good because the most important thing for Pietro was getting laps in. I thought he did very well in FP2. I hope he’s not too worn out now because of the physical demands. Kevin (Magnussen) did a good job today as well, he was solid while getting used to the new track layout. Now we get ready for tomorrow.