The third triple-header of the season gave us some high and low moments. The great result at Monza was an important boost for the entire team, but what happened at Mugello is something I hope we never see again in a race. As I said before, the most important thing is that everyone left unharmed, but I’m sure we will discuss it all together again in Russia to understand what happened and agree on how we can avoid it in the future. Nine races in 11 weekends was super tough for the whole crew, so it’s been good to have some time to reset, properly analyse the last races and recharge batteries. I look forward to the Russian GP. I finished P6 there last season and scored some good points, but that was a year ago and now we face new challenges and still an extremely tight fight to get into the points. We obviously want to stay ahead of the competition, maximise all opportunities and bring home a good result. Let’s go for it!

We head to the Russian Grand Prix next, for the first flyaway of the season. The schedule is looking a bit more ‘normal’ for the next few races after three triple-headers. Having time to recharge after nine races in 11 weeks was needed but I’m ready to go again. We know we’ve got our work cut out for us with the midfield competition being so close, but hopefully we can hit the ground running right from FP1 on Friday. The track in Sochi has its own challenges with a mixture of technical 90-degree corners and high-speed straights, not to mention the 180-degree left-hander that is Turn Three. Following on from Mugello, it’ll be great to have fans back in the grandstands again in Russia to cheer us on. Of course, the priority is to ensure they enjoy the race safely, and we want to put on the best show we can for them.

Preparing to head to Russia for the first flyaway of the season brings its own set of different challenges in comparison to the previous triple-headers due to freight and logistically challenging timelines. Over the course of the first three triple-headers the production team back at the MTC have done a tremendous job in ensuring we had all the required parts we needed in such a short space of time. It was unfortunate that Carlos was involved in a crash at the Tuscan Grand Prix, but I’m glad nobody was harmed. From a production standpoint, we lost significant parts over the weekend at Mugello which need backfilling and preparing ahead of the flyaway to Sochi. The entire factory in all areas and on all shifts are continuing to rise to the challenge to work as one unified team to push parts and developments out to the team at track, to ensure we have every opportunity to consolidate and improve. Even though we are past the halfway point of the season, we still have to focus on the task at hand and continue to work hard. The balance of resources between car upgrades, spare parts and next year’s car continues to be an exciting challenge in this compact season. We’ll be deploying some new updates in future races with the aim to improve the car.