It’s good to be racing in Europe again and starting off in Turkey, which is a great track and a lot of fun. The fact that this race is slightly earlier this year should be interesting because it is usually quite hot when we come here. We expect it to be cooler so with the new tyres for this year it is difficult for anyone to predict too much.

Turn 8 has become one of my favourite corners. That and the fact that this is one of only a handful of anti-clockwise tracks we will race at this year makes this one of the best and most challenging circuits around I think. Istanbul is a great city - very interesting, - so I look forward to getting out and about a little bit.

Then there’s a lot of hard work to focus on with our new upgrade. It’s quite a major package but these things take time to adapt to the track and our focus has to be getting as much running as possible so we can get maximum data and use it to keep working with the car in the next few races.

Istanbul Park Circuit is a track I know well from my GP2 career and I love it, so I’m looking forward to heading to Turkey this week. The track has some good challenges and the chance to race on an anti-clockwise circuit is always fun and reminds you why you have to keep pushing so hard with your fitness levels, which I’ve been doing over the three-week break.

For me it’s all about steady progress now. I’m really happy with my first three races in F1 and now I have to not just maintain that but keep pushing myself and moving forward as there is still so much to learn.

It’s been a well-deserved three weeks of rest after the first wave of long haul races, but I think everyone at Marussia Virgin Racing is looking forward to getting back on the road this week. It’s great to be back on relative home turf - in Europe - because we have everything we need at our fingertips, with the race trucks and motorhome at our disposal. We also have some fantastic circuits coming our way - a real mix of old and new.

By our own admission it’s been a difficult start to the year, but we actually started doing something about that when we realised back in testing that we had not met our targets. We’ve been working hard behind the scenes since the middle of February and this weekend sees the culmination of all those efforts when we will be able to see just how much we can progress now. The extent of our upgrade package for the start of the European season is significant to say the least. Aerodynamically it’s a new direction for us and we’re hopeful that it will help us start to turn the corner, although with such a major step it may take us some time to tune it to the racetrack. Jerome will not have the benefit of the full upgrade package until Spain but he will get a taste of some of the elements this weekend. We are of course mindful of the fact that everyone should have taken a step forward ready for Europe, so we will have to see how we’ve fared versus the rest of the field.

The drivers love the Istanbul Park Circuit. It’s a spectacular 5.338km track that has a bit of everything, but Turn 8 is worthy of particular mention having become one of the infamous corners in F1. We’ve started to gain a real understanding of the Pirelli tyres which leaves us well placed in terms of planning race strategies. Having said that we have not yet experienced a corner quite like Turn 8 with these tyres and we will be interested to see if it throws up an anomaly.