After that GP2 took its annual summer break, when Marcos went to training camp with Javi. They spent some time up in Asturias near Oviedo, where Fernando Alonso’s ex-trainer – currently Javi’s trainer – took both of them and really trained them very hard. Javi obviously was already at a very high level, but it was interesting to see how Marcos had changed at the next round in Turkey. He had lost five kilos since Hungary and seemed a lot fitter. They worked very hard at it – yes, they had a couple of days off too, but they really spent the time getting in shape, and for Marcos especially that really helped.
Javi was hoping he would get there in Istanbul, but he had a gearbox problem before qualifying. You go out with a work schedule for that half hour free practice, and then when you have a problem on the car and it doesn’t run properly it means you spend your time working on solving that rather than setting it up for qualifying. The problem persisted through qualifying too, so it was just generally a weekend that started off on the wrong foot which was a pity because Javi deserved more, especially coming off back-to-back wins as he was. He likes Istanbul a lot as a track as well – I think every driver does – and he was excited arriving there, but it just didn’t work out so we put a cross on the weekend and went back home.
I think the disappointment affected the team more than Javi, because he’s very good at switching off. He’s not emotional at all, which is kind of strange for a Spaniard – I sometimes say his parents were probably from Greenland or something! He didn’t have that much of a problem with it – sure, it bothered him a bit, but then he just thought ‘I’ll get on with my work’. It was more emotional for the team after those back-to-back wins and put us on a low, but at the same time we never change our work rhythm.
![Alfonso de Orleans Borbon - Racing Engineering [pic credit: GP2 media]](http://pix.crash.net/thumbs/163611.jpg)
