The F1 Career Story [1999-2024]

My first race weekend as Formula One driver is done. I've made it to the finish in 13th! In a direct fight, I managed to keep Ricardo Zonta from BAR behind me, as well as the world champion Mika Häkkinen and Olivier Panis, though they dropped back later in the race due to damage and technical issues.

My start from 18th was okay. I managed to stay out of trouble and held my position. That didn't apply to my team mate Marc Gené unfortunately, who touched Rubens Barrichello after which both were out of the race. Alex Würz, Jean Alesi and Pedro de la Rosa also had damage and visited the pit lane. After one lap I was in 13th.

It stayed that way until lap 20, when behind me Toranosuke Takagi and Jacques Villeneuve had a huge crash in turn 1. It caused a Safety Car and the team opted to take me in for a pit stop. They put me on another set of hard tyres, in hindsight it would've been better to put me on softs at that time.

Three laps later, we went back to green flag racing. I was now in 16th and I had a hard time making the tyres work. However, by lap 42 I worked my way up into 9th place. But my second stop threw me back to 13th, which is where I remained until the end of the race.

Towards the end, I was happy that I managed to keep a car or two behind me, because by doing so I reached my rookie-target: the team and myslef wanted to finish the race and not come home in last place: mission accomplished! I even kept the world champion behind me; not many can say that after their maiden race. Our car is far away from the points, though the gap to the driver in 6th (Pedro Diniz) was only 33 seconds, meaning we need to find half a second per lap in the upcoming races to become competitive. Next up is Brazil!