My start was ok and I was ahead of a couple of cars but then saw the Ferrari impact and had to go way off track to avoid hitting him. I made it through almost without any issues – there was a bit of damage to the nose but nothing else we could see then, so we were fine to restart. The main thing for me was I wanted to make sure Kimi was ok. It was a big crash, and while I was lucky to avoid it, I hope he’s ok. The initial reports I’ve heard are that he’s not too bad but I just hope that’s the case. We started under the safety car and I was just behind my teammate and then saw he retired so pushed on to the group just ahead. The car did feel very different to how it was when I started – the aero balance had changed and it was clear we’d lost some downforce, almost certainly from the rallying I had to do, but I kept going as hard as I could. I’d started on mediums and they were holding up ok right until we boxed for the first time on lap 18 to go on to a set of hards. They felt really good but from that point it was pretty much a race on my own – the pack ahead was too far down the road for me to catch and I only had Chilton a long way behind me so I just focused on bringing the car home.

I had a fantastic start, my best of the year so far, and passed several cars on the outside of turn one, so by the time the red flag came out I was up to 16th, five places up from where I’d started. I was ahead of the crash that Kamui managed to avoid so my car was fine and after we restarted under the safety car I was ahead of him but then, going into turn six I hit something in the kerbs that smashed my suspension and that was the end of the race. It’s a shame that we had a DNF today as, even though quali didn’t go to plan, the weekend for me has been ok and I wanted a good race today, but now it’s on to Hockenheim, a track I’ve always liked racing at.

We’re obviously not happy with where we finished today, but for my first weekend with the team I have to say it’s been good. We’re not even a week into this new chapter in the team’s life but we’ve already seen just how hard everyone at the track and at the factory is prepared to work to push us forwards, and how determined we all are to achieve our targets this year. We obviously have a lot of work to do but we’re prepared for the challenges ahead and we have another chance in two weeks time to make progress in Germany, so we’ll aim to do just that and, little by little, keep improving.