Hi everybody.

I’m writing this at the airport on my way back from Portugal, after another great weekend and my second World Rally Championship rally win. I’m pleased to report that my head isn’t too bad (!) – but it has been a bit hectic over the past 24 hours so I thought I’d just get a few thoughts online about it all.

If you’d asked me a few weeks before Portugal, I’d have said I was optimistic about being able to put in a good performance there. I knew we’d be running pretty far back in the field and the weather in Portugal is normally pretty hot, dry and dusty – so there was the potential for the road to clean up with each passing car.

Would I have said we could win, though? It’s impossible to say that; winning a WRC round isn’t easy, whatever the circumstances.

And then when we turned up to start the recce, I’d have been even less sure. There’d been a fair bit of rain in the weeks leading up to the rally, so the roads were still pretty damp and humid. In fact, I’d go as far as to say that in quite a few places, you’d have been better to be the first car on the road – which is to say that the surface wouldn’t clean up at all.

By the time the rally started the weather had improved, but I’m not sure if we had any massive advantage in conditions on the first day. Sure, some of Friday’s roads were cleaning up a bit, but there were also areas where it was worse, with some ruts and rocks.

It was Saturday morning – that first loop – where things really came towards Paul [Nagle] and I. The roads were definitely cleaning then, so it was down to us to take full advantage of that – don’t they say you should make hay while the sun shines? I’m paid to drive the road in front of me to the best of my ability, and I did that.

So we ended up with a healthy lead – a minute by Saturday lunchtime – and I ended up having to protect that over the remainder of the event. It felt very different from my first win in Argentina, this one. I wouldn’t necessarily say it was easier, but because I’d already been through the nerve-jangling stuff for the first win, it was all a bit more relaxed in the car this time. Experience makes a huge difference; I know that now.

A lot of people say the first win is the monkey off your back but for me, I think it’s almost the second one. A lot of drivers can win one rally through a specific set of circumstances, and that was certainly what happened to me in Argentina, where the VWs all hit problems of some kind.

But in Portugal we beat them while they were all still competitive – and in the case of Andreas and Sebastien, when they were fighting like cat and dog for second place. So this win really feels significant to me.

I have to pay tribute to the team behind it, though. My normal engineer is Didier Clement but he’s heading up the development work this year, so he’s chief engineer on the tests. So in Portugal my engineer was a guy called Kevin Struyf, and he did top work. He looked back over every single byte of data from last year, really, because 12 months ago Portugal was a new rally for everybody and there was a lot we could potentially learn from it – car set-up, tyre choice and so forth. We had all the information to hand and with Kevin’s preparation, we made the right calls throughout.

It wasn’t just him, of course; I really have to mention PH Sport too. We’re not running under the official Citroen Racing operation but as a satellite team, PH are terrific; there’s really not much difference at all between them and being with the factory team, which is a huge achievement on their part.

It’s back to testing for me for the foreseeable future; I don’t think I’ll be competing in Sardinia or Poland, because I’m working on developing the car for 2017. It was great to get back to competition last weekend, because going up against the clock and other drivers is what I love to do. But I know that putting in the hours on the new car now will mean we’re in a better position to fight for more wins next year, so that has to be my focus. Think of it as a medium- to long-term plan!

As always, thanks for your support,

Kris