An early morning swim followed by a long run is not what I would normally have done on the Sunday morning of the Australian Grand Prix! But things have changed since I was here a year ago and although I was in Melbourne for Friday and Saturday, I was able to watch the race unfold on telly back home in Queensland! It was interesting to be watching it from the outside but with all the knowledge from inside.

Returning to Albert Park was a little bit like it was before I was in F1 because although I wasn’t involved with the F1 programme, I was in and around some of the support events. I went to the Porsche Carrera Cup paddock to see the guys there and caught up with some old faces I used to race against back in the day in the junior categories. It was good to be able to spend time with people I hadn’t seen for ages.

There was a bit of strange weather floating around earlier in the week and where normally I would be interested in talking to the engineers about the run plan and how we would deal with the weather, this year it wasn’t even on my radar. When you’re not competing you’re not interested in a bit of rain on the windscreen on Wednesday and thinking how it might unfold on the weekend. I was a lot more relaxed but I was still mindful of the fact that I was there and I had a job to do especially with my commentating role for Network Ten which I wanted to ensure I did a good job with.

To my surprise I really enjoyed helping the commentary team with my experience, with the basics of what happens in qualifying, how you see it from a drivers perspective and how the team execute the session and talking about all the specialities, even though commenting was uncharted water for me.

It takes a while to become accustomed to all the cameras that are set up in a studio… the producer wants you to be looking at certain cameras and there is a lot going on both on the set and behind the scenes. They helped me through that as I am still very green but it just goes to show how good the TV guys are in putting on a great programme and I learnt a lot being on the other side.

The Australian race is a sensational event and the Australian Grand Prix Corporation does a great job organising so many other categories on-trackaround the F1 schedule, something which some other countries might feel the heat with. I did get the chance to watch the V8 touring cars which is a massive category out here, but my schedule unfortunately didn’t allow me to catch up with all the guys I know from there.

It’s amazing how quick the build up of a Grand Prix comes around. The race itself wasn’t super exciting, there was not as much going on as I thought there would be. I was really happy with the podium because Nico was the form man, he managed everything well out front. Obviously the big story out here is Daniel getting the car home, which was a big surprise for everyone after RBR’s limited pre-season testing, but then being disqualified for a fuel technicality. He drove brilliantly all weekend, qualifying was a very good effort in those tricky conditions and despite the disappointment, he should be very happy with his weekend and will have already pressed the reset button for Malaysia in two weeks. Also, Kevin Magnussen did a great job finishing his first race on the podium being the first Danish driver up there. They had a few big scalps out with Lewis and Seb retiring but that’s what you expect at this stage in the season and those other guys took their opportunity.

Even though I still had a busy schedule this year I did have some time to do more fun activities and not be so regimental with my timing. There wasn’t the need to lock myself away as much as I used to have during an F1 race weekend.

I went down to Philip Island with Porsche. The manufacturers use the track for their VIPs to showcase their latest models. I drove the Turbo and Turbo S on a track I last raced on in 1995 where I won the Formula Ford race. It hasn’t changed massively; there are huge sea birds who sit at the side of the track and it’s very easy to hit one of those and damage the cars. I remember coming back to the pits one day with blood all over my helmet having hit a bird in my Formula Ford. The track is a bit smoother today but it’s real old-school. We thrashed the cars around with Porsche VIPs and I enjoyed driving them. It was a beautiful day and I took the helicopter to fly down there which was nice.

A lot of people I talked to over the past week are very excited about Le Mans, the 919 Hybrid and asking lots of questions because they are so removed from it. Hopefully though we will be able to share the WEC with the Australian fans a bit more this year so they can get to enjoy and understand the different concept of racing. The welcome I received from the fans coming back to Melbourne blew me away, whether it was at the hotel or at track. They were just thankful for my long career where they could support me and they enjoyed watching me challenge for big results week in and out. It was good to see the support and spend a sniff more time with them than I did in the years gone by. I did a big signing session on Saturday and received a lot of nice words from the Aussie fans knowing that one chapter is closed and another opens with Porsche and many of them are planning to come to Le Mans. They accept that it’s a change but I think they enjoy following me from F1 to sports cars and it’s great to see them again.

We will be doing our first official test in Paul Ricard end of the month where we will have all the big boys there testing together. It’s also a good track for us to test, it’s quick with long straights and we will get a bit of an idea how the preparation is going.

The focus is to get prepared for executing the best test. It’s actually similar watching F1 and what we are going through now with the preparations. Some teams had some tricky preparation in their F1 build up and it’s quite similar for us. The cars are very advanced now and you just want to have a clean, normal weekend but as we saw in Melbourne over the weekend, it’s not that easy. It shows you when you keep working hard though, there are some great results around the corner. We are in the same boat. It’s only a few weeks out from the first race, so we need to keep working hard and off the back of that last test, get ready for Silverstone.

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