Well if you read my last column, I did say Zandvoort was going to be difficult! Even so, a best result of 13th was very disappointing after the team put in so much effort.
To be honest with you, I think we were really unlucky, firstly because I didn’t know the circuit and secondly because things didn’t quite go according to plan in qualifying.
In the World Touring Car Championship, if you don’t start in the top eight you effectively can’t finish in the top eight because the level of driver is so high and there’s a lot of people with a lot of very good cars; you’re definitely up against it.
Of course, neither of my races in Holland were incident-free either. Unfortunately my knock with Tom Coronel broke the front suspension in race one. I limped around to the end but that doesn’t score any points.
However, despite the hard luck we’ve had so far, we’ve made a lot of progress with the Alfa Romeo since the beginning of the season and we’ve gained a lot of information from the first two race weekends. We tried a few things in both the races at Zandvoort; just set-up fundamentals mostly. We’ve now decided that we’re going to change the car and make it more suited to my driving style.
The car is infinitely changeable really and it’s hard to put my driving style into words, but there are things that I need that weren’t on it so we’ve been working steadily towards it. It’s not the newest car on the grid, however, and we do recognise our limitations.
Saying that, I am sure we can win races and I think Valencia is going to be a turning point for us in the season so I’m very up-beat. I know the circuit for a start and I think we’ve got a good idea of where we need to be with the car.
