drivers-diary.com

A few weeks ago I was out here in America doing my first ever test in an Indy Lights car at Sebring in Florida, and my first test with my new team for 2009, Panther Racing. I flew back to Europe for my last World Series race with P1 Motorsport, and then came back to America where I will now be until Thanksgiving at the end of November. Last week, a couple of days after arriving back, I got on a plane and went back down to Florida for my next test with Panther Racing – this time however it would be a little different to anything I had ever done before. This time I was going to running for the first time ever on an oval. (more…)

Barcelona this weekend – the last round of the 2008 World Series by Renault Championship, and for me personally, it was also the end of an era. Two years in World Series with P1 Motorsport, and four years in total including my FR 2.0 years with the Renault family. Also, with my move to America looming for 2009, possibly my last race in Europe for some time. (more…)

Expectations are not always the most helpful thing in motor racing, and that’s certainly been apparent this weekend in Portugal! Ever since my first outing on this circuit a year ago, I have been looking forward to arriving in Estoril, getting out onto the track, and instantly being on the pace. If ever there was going to be a weekend where I was going to get some strong results, I expected it to be here. I think we might be better off without expectations – then we can be neither optimistic, nor sceptical, and when things don’t go how we expect them to, it’s not quite so disappointing. (more…)

This weekend was my third ever race weekend in a GT car the final race of the Porsche Carrera Cup GB which I have been competing in briefly alongside my World Series by Renault commitments. (more…)

When I wrote my diary column last week, I told you that I would turn up this weekend at Le Mans and be fast, but that the weekend needed rather a lot less drama – especially on Saturday mornings when the time for qualifying counts. (more…)

Cheerful racing drivers are a bit of a rare breed – the race winner is generally pretty cheerful, so that’s basically one out of 26 World Series drivers. The other podium finishers may be cheerful, or they may feel hard done by if they were eyeing the win… So at best maybe there could be two or three cheerful drivers out of 26. Then there’s the odd person who is pleased for reaons which seem to the outside world to be insignificant. This weekend, I unfortunately didn’t join the World Series podium club, but I did rejoin the ‘points-scoring-club’, the ‘fast-racing-car-club’, and as a result, the ‘cheerful-racing-driver’s-club’. (more…)

For those of you who have never been to Knockhill, it’s a race circuit on a hill in Scotland. It’s generally pretty cold, and more often than not it rains. There is a whole group of telecom masts on the next hill and the general wisdom is that if you can see them, it’ll be raining soon, and if you can’t see them? Well then it’s already raining… It may have been the middle of August for the rest of the county, but I packed my wellies and wooly hat regardless! (more…)

Before turning up at Oulton Park this weekend, I completed a full day at Donington Park in the Porsche 911 Carrera Cup car I would be racing. The test was a success with everything going well – we ran through some changes on the car, and I was feeling pretty bullish about turning up at Oulton Park to be competitive. (more…)

This weekend I was in Hungary for the next round of the World Series by Renault, and it was one of the most up and down weekends of the year. On the plus side the highs were pretty good, but on the downside they just didn’t come when it mattered. (more…)

In many ways this was not the Silverstone weekend I had hoped for, but despite not getting the results I’d wanted, it was actually a pretty an amazing weekend – because of you, the fans! (more…)