Sébastien Bourdais has described his costly accident with
Scuderia Toro Rosso's new STR3 during testing in Barcelona last week as ‘just one of those bad days when racing drivers make a mistake', whilst insisting that he is positive the future of the team is in safe hands.
The Frenchman – a four-time Champ Car king prior to his long-awaited switch over to
Formula 1 this year – scored points on his debut in Melbourne with seventh place, though he would have been fourth, ahead of double world champion
Fernando Alonso no less, had his engine not blown up almost within sight of the chequered flag.
From that high, however, there have been nothing but disheartening lows, with myriad technical issues conspiring to disrupt his learning curve – and the impact with the Circuit de Catalunya's unforgiving crash barriers proving indisputably to be the lowest point yet.
“Melbourne was my hottest race ever,” Bourdais reflected in an interview with the official Formula 1 site. “It was obviously very important not to make any mistakes, and I didn't make any mistakes – but that is what they [the team] are expecting from you. I was just really happy that for the first race it was quite good; it was quite satisfying.
“We knew the first race would be eventful, but of course we had no idea that it would be that eventful. When you have crazy races like that, it's when you need to be strong and make no mistakes. For us it is seizing chances at every race, and Melbourne was a good chance for me. I knew after I scored two points that the media session would not be just a five-minute affair…
“Then in Malaysia it was 41 degrees and I lost a lot of water. Everybody reacts differently to heat, and it seems that since I moved from Florida and settled in Switzerland I tend to endure the heat a bit differently. It used to affect me quite a bit, then when I moved to the States and after two years in Florida it was no problem anymore. Now we have moved back to Europe, heat feels surprisingly uncomfortable again.”
