I really like being in the United States and the city of Austin is amazing. It is just a great location and the atmosphere around the whole event is special, different to what we usually have. The circuit itself is also quite unique. Inspired by parts of some of the most iconic race tracks around the world, it gives us drivers a really nice challenge. With a long straight and a lot of different types of corners, you have to make sure to find the right balance for the car. It is also one of the few tracks to run counter-clockwise, so that mixes things up for us in the cockpit, too.

The US GP in Austin is a very different proposition to the high-altitude of Mexico. The Circuit of the Americas is an exciting track, with a wide range of cornering speeds and lots of changes of direction. It’s quite bumpy, particularly in the big braking zones so it’s easy to lock wheels there. The strategy choice is quite open, with both one and two-stop plans looking possible. It’s a tricky circuit to get the tyres into the right performance window, so Friday running is important to understand the tyres and get prepared for the race. Last year’s event was difficult because none of us got much useful running due to the poor weather on Friday. The forecast for this year is dry but quite cool. It should be a good circuit for us but, as we saw last year, we can take nothing for granted and the competition is also strong.

We have started the last six races from pole position but have only gone on to win three of them and we certainly want to do better than that. We are encouraged by the fact that we now have a package that allows us to fight for wins on most tracks. It’s a significant improvement on how we started the year and credit must go to all the people in Maranello and at the track, who have worked so hard to fight back from where we started. We need to use the last three races of this season to further develop as a group and to operate in the sharpest possible manner in order to be better prepared for next year. It is a very tight field at the front and every detail matters if we want to win more often. Austin will hopefully give us a good opportunity to do so. It is a very challenging track with many different combinations of corner. Of course everyone will be looking to see what happens with the tyres after the surprising longevity of Pirelli’s hard compound last week in Mexico. We are aware that every track can produce its own particular surprises and our aim is to be ready to react to whatever situation might arise. Finally, it’s always special to race in the US, a country with a huge history of motor racing. We won here last year and the team’s motivation will be to try and bring home a very good result.