Last year I had a good race weekend here, qualifying in P3 and finishing P5 despite not having KERS available in the race, so this is a track that suits me and I have good memories of it. Abu Dhabi also has great weather, nice people and is generally impressive all around so it is a nice place to visit. I like the track's first sector in particular as it is very quick, particularly Turns 2, 3 and 4, and the final sector is very picturesque. Whenever we visit a race with a hot climate we can see thermal tyre degradation, so this will be a focus for us in the build up to the weekend. We have made some progress in recent weeks and the car felt better in India, so we will be looking to continue moving forwards as we approach the final few races of the season.

Abu Dhabi is very different to recent tracks; the corners are quite short with lots of chicanes and big braking zones, so we will need to set the car up differently. You need good traction when exiting the corners to minimise wheel spin and your car needs to be good at taking kerbs. We are not expecting the track to be too severe on tyres, although because the ambient and track temperatures are quite high the tyres can degrade thermally quite a bit so we will need to manage that. I have good memories of the Yas Marina Circuit as this is where I drove a Formula One car for the first time in 2011 with Williams, and we had a strong result here last year as well which should prove useful for this weekend when setting the car up.

The Abu Dhabi Grand Prix is a unique race starting under the glare of the sunshine and ending as the sun goes down. The Yas Marina Circuit features medium to high efficiency, with long straights and slow speed corners, which results in high brake energy. It has a lower than average turn angle but corner speeds and fuel consumption are about average. However, the circuit is different to most for tyres; lateral tyre energy is low whilst longitudinal energy is high due to the severe braking and traction demands. Furthermore, the track surface not only improves over the weekend, but the track evolves between and even within sessions, with sometimes significant drops in track temperature. Tyre degradation can be an issue due to the high temperatures and changing track conditions, this could be especially important in the race regarding strategy and the order in which you run on each compound.