After a tough weekend in Baku, Jolyon looks forward to the challenges of the high-speed Red Bull Ring.
How would you review Baku, one week on?
Actually I feel very positive about the overall Baku weekend, even though I don’t have a lot to show for it! The yellow flags in qualifying cost us a lot and then I made some mistakes in the race. The crux of my problems came in turn one: I got a good start, but then locked up and flat spotted the tyres under braking for the corner. This meant I had to do another pit stop, without which I think we could have been a bit higher up and ahead of both Haas cars. But on the whole the car was OK and we are making progress.
Austria: climb every mountain, ford every stream?
Yes, I’m looking forward to getting back into the European heartland. Unfortunately we were not that competitive in Baku but we should be more on it in Austria, which is a faster circuit and should suit our car a lot better.
Do you enjoy racing on the track?
The Red Bull Ring is quite a simple track, with just seven corners. Putting a good lap together is very important as the lap times are very close and any mistake can really hurt. I like that though, as the driver can make more of a difference. There are some bumpy zones and some overtaking possibilities, such as turn one and turn two. There are some fast corners as well, including the second-last corner that is pretty quick. Then the last corner has a bit of camber and you need to carry the speed through. I raced there in 2014 in GP2 and I drove in FP1 last year. It’s a lot more fun in an F1 car as there are more straightlines and the tyre deg is very low so we can be flat out the whole race.