"I was always confident in myself, but I was always having to deal with problems that weren't of my making. This year, we're on the same piece of paper, sorting out what are my problems and giving the team the things they need to sort out. We're helping each other and I'm learning a lot from them, but also giving them good ideas."
However, having established himself as a potential dark horse for 2006, the opening round in Valencia seemed to show that his luck would be slow to change. Having qualified fifth, a lengthening brake pedal cost Viso valuable places around pit-stop time and it was only a fighting drive in the closing stages that eventually netted a point. That, of course, meant pole for Sunday, but the iSport car was out-dragged off the line by rookie Michael Ammermuller and victory went away again as Viso was left to defend from Nicolas Lapierre for the entire race.
The series then returned to Imola, seen of its first appearance, and a favourite venue of Viso's. Practice performance - second to
Lewis Hamilton on Friday morning - was not replicated in qualifying, but Viso battled through to sixth by the end of Saturday's feature race. That yielded a second row start for Sunday, when things finally came right for both team and driver.
"It feels very good to be a race winner at last," Viso grinned, "I knew this would come - even if it came a little bit late because, last year, we were expecting to get some wins.
"I was always confident that I could be on the pace in GP2, but the win never happened because it was a difficult year for us, with a lot of problems. But this year has been quite good already and I'm sure it is going to get even better because the team is doing a very good job and I think I'm doing the job as well. Everything is starting to come together."
While some will point to GP2's ploy of reversing Saturday's point scorers at the head of the grid for Sunday as reason enough for Viso's success, he disagrees, reminding them that he still had to make moves on a track the
Formula One's elite found difficulty passing on.
