"Barcelona’s Circuit de Catalunya – a circuit on which I’ve driven… ooh, maybe seven million laps. God, who knows?! But I can tell you that even with all those laps on all those days I have never been on that track without it surprising me. I’ve never had two laps the same there – never! It changes so quickly and regularly that you really struggle to understand it. It’s definitely not logical, so definitely kind of a bit Spanish. Quite similar, in fact, to Pedro [de la Rosa], my best mate in the pit lane and the real king of Spain, as far as I’m concerned!

Every year the drivers, the engineers, the journalists, basically everyone with an opinion, tries to understand why, on race weekends, the track is nearly always especially strange. We all complain about the set-up being wrong and, for as long as I’ve been in Formula One, that’s more or less the context of all the teams’ press releases on Friday evenings.

It’s a high-speed track with a few big-boys’ corners, like turn three, which will be flat this year in qualifying. But despite a long start-finish straight where we go above 185mph, overtaking is almost impossible. Since they re-surfaced the whole track, the physical demands have increased even more. The old track had a very abrasive surface which caused a high amount of graining and the surface aspect of the tyres was so aggressive that after one quick lap the tyres always dropped lap times by up to three or four seconds over a long run, which then made it less hard on the neck.

The new smooth surface means a greater tyre contact patch, so there’s more friction, which means more grip. The grip gets even higher with more running and more rubber being laid down (similar to many new race tracks). But it’s also much less aggressive on the surface aspect of the tyre, meaning that the long runs are very consistent and sometimes even end quicker than they started. That’s due to the high fuel effect (lost lap time with more weight/fuel in the car) compared to a small tyre degradation.

So, for the drivers, Barcelona has become very physically demanding, with high speeds, high g-forces and very consistent lap times. You have to work hard for your money these days!

I have to say that I really look forward to the Grand Prix in Barcelona. Since the Alonso wave electrified Spain, the Spanish GP has become a huge event. I remember just a few years ago the grandstands were filled by just a few thousand amigos. Now the emotional Spanish are among the best spectators in Formula One and it’s the only Grand Prix where we see more blue than red hats in the grandstands! The city is awesome too – cool places and bars and lots of “eyecatchers”!

One last thought: watch lap 18 in the race. It’s my guess that it’ll be everyone’s ‘darling’ for the first pit stop."