In his second exclusive column for Crash.net, GP2 rookie Christian Bakkerud talks us through his debut outing in the category in Bahrain last month, and explains why he has high hopes for the upcoming round in Barcelona this weekend…
First of all, it was great to be racing again! I really enjoy the racing part of motorsport – although there is a lot of testing, you can never really simulate racing during a test.
You don’t get as many tyres during testing – you only get two sets a day and need to get the most out of them while still testing as much as you can, so you don’t really get the opportunity to go out and do these very long runs. You don’t have the chance to go out and start overtaking everyone else either, so it was very interesting to get back into racing. You also have to learn all the different radio chatter between the pit-lane and yourself, and you have the drinks bottle and so on – all the small things you have to get used to.
I’ve been working very hard on my fitness, so while Bahrain was tough, it wasn’t as tough as I had expected it to be. I really thought it was going to be hard work. Obviously Bahrain isn’t that physically demanding a circuit though – Barcelona will be quite a bit tougher. Turn three there is a real neck-killer and there are a few more turns that will be more physically demanding than Bahrain was.
Bahrain was a bit of an up-and-down weekend overall, but I managed to get one race distance under my belt which I’m quite pleased with. It was the longer race too, so now at least I’ve done that and know what to expect – I know how the tyres are going to perform in the race, how they’re going to drop off and all those things. I drove with a very, very heavy car and felt the transition when the car gets lighter as you burn off fuel.
![Christian Bakkerud - DPR [pic credit: GP2 Series media]](http://pix.crash.net/thumbs/294345.jpg)
