Giedo van der Garde: "Next up it's Canada, a track I've never raced at but one I went to last year with Caterham as Reserve Driver. I sat in on all the briefings and debriefs last year so I have quite a bit of information about what it's going to be like from 2012, and I've spent quite a bit of time on my sim at home trying the track, but you obviously don't really know what it's like until you drive around it, but it will only take a couple of laps to get used to it.
"What I do remember from last year was how hardcore the fans are in Montreal! We have a couple of big North American sponsors, so the team had a lot of guests in the paddock and in the grandstands, but I remember that from early on Thursday morning the whole place was packed! In the city itself it was the same - there's one street where the whole place is shut down for the race weekend and we had a team dinner there on the Saturday night. It was a fantastic atmosphere, a lot like it is at home in Holland for big sports events, so I felt really comfortable there and am excited about getting back, this time to race!
"On track I think it'll be interesting to see where we are after Monaco. I was glad to bring the car home, but after the best Saturday of the year so far we obviously wanted to finish higher up. Even with that, there were some good signs in the race that we are making decent progress. Personally, for me it was another step in the learning curve, and for the team in general we saw that we'd fixed the rear wing issue we'd found in Barcelona, and had enough pace to get the car into Q2 and to record one of the fastest laps in the race in the early stages. Montreal is a medium to low downforce track and with the constant updates we're making to the package we took to Spain, I think we could be ok."
Autosport
Circuito Permanente de Jerez – February 5 - Giedo: 1:21.915 - 64 laps
