‘Home’ comforts on the eve of the British GP

After enjoying my home Grand Prix in Canada and spending a little extra time with my family back in Toronto, we’re back at it this weekend for my second ‘home’ race at Silverstone.

There’s always a lot to look forward to at the British Grand Prix; it’s my favourite track on the calendar, there’s likely to be thousands of Williams fans turning out to support the team, and it’s also a race where I don’t have to jump on a plane and spend hours travelling. That makes a welcome change!

It’s been nice to do some fun things before heading to Silverstone as well. First, I went to the Williams pop-up store in London on Monday to meet loads of Williams fans. It’s probably the busiest autograph signing session I’ve ever taken part in – but it was a lot of fun.

Then, I celebrated my birthday properly for a change. I turned 27 on Wednesday and I’m normally out of the country. But this year it coincided with Silverstone so my girlfriend organised a short break for us in the UK. That was a bonus.

So, looking to this weekend, and particularly at the sporting side, this is the race where we’ll bring our first major upgrade package of the year which is something we’ve been very patiently waiting for. The car’s going to look pretty different to the one we’ve been using so far and it will be interesting to see how it shapes up.

Unfortunately, I won’t have the upgrade on my car for probably another couple of races. I’m expecting to see it in France – if all goes well. But I’ll be keeping a keen eye on it to see what it brings. There’s always little niggles when you bring an upgrade to the track, but it’s fair to say we’re all hoping they can be overcome quickly and that our new look will help us to close the gap.

From my side of the garage, I’ll be getting on with the weekend as normal. The tricky thing is I’ve now lost the one main reference that I have because Alex won’t be driving an identical car to me. And the fact that we have the slowest car on the grid already won’t make my job any easier. But that’s the hand we’ve been dealt so we just get on with the job.

In the performance stakes, I’m not really expecting anything too different from the previous races this season. My sole focus is on delivering the best job I can and enjoying this breed of F1 car on such a cool ‘home’ circuit.