Jean-Eric Vergne looks back to his race-ending crash in Singapore and ahead to hopefully better times this weekend in Japan in his latest blog.
I’ve had a pretty busy time since Singapore, with obviously quite a lot of time spent talking about the accident that happened there with Michael. Honestly, there’s not much more to say about it beyond the fact that he made a mistake and anybody can have a moment like that, especially in such a long race. Everyone gets tired and if you lose concentration for even a split second then it can have pretty serious consequences.
However, it was a pity that I was involved in those consequences! I have to say that immediately afterwards I was really angry, so I stayed in the car for a few moments to calm down. Slowly you come to realise that the race is over, there’s nothing more you can do about the situation and so that’s that. I got out of the car, went over to him to hear what he had to say for himself and all he said was “sorry, my mistake”. You just have to accept it and move on. It was pretty disappointing though, as I think I was headed for some good points. However, as I said, last week was so busy that I didn’t really think about the incident again.
After Singapore I went straight back to the UK for some simulator work to prepare for this race in Japan and then last weekend I went home to France to do a show car run for Red Bull at the World Series by Renault at Paul Ricard.
I was driving an RB6 on the Saturday of the event and it absolutely poured with rain on the day. I was taking it pretty easy because the conditions were so bad but you still want to put the car through its paces to give the fans a good show. There was some pretty big lightning as well so that kind of added to the atmosphere I think!
The car was also driven by Alain Prost, which was pretty cool. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to spend any time with him as I had left the track by the time he arrived on Saturday evening for his briefing and seat fitting. Honestly, I think my job was just to get the car warmed up for him!
After that it was straight out here to Japan and Suzuka, which, as everyone says, is pretty amazing. The atmosphere at the circuit is very special and the fans here are really passionate about Formula One. So far I’ve been incredibly impressed by the great support we’ve been getting here. It makes you feel really welcome and gives you a lot of motivation.
In terms of how we’ll do there, it’s open to question. I think we’ve put in some good performances as a team in the past few races and we did make a bit of a step forward, so there’s no reason why that shouldn’t be the case here.
We have a few new bits here and hopefully they’ll provide some benefit but I won’t expect too much and then maybe I’ll get a nice surprise.
The truth is, for us these final races will still be sometimes about taking the opportunities of other people’s bad luck to make our own good luck; that’s the reality. However, knowing that doesn’t alter your will to race. You go out there and fight for everything you can get in every session, this is what we’re here for, all of us in the team. And for us drivers, well, we just have to be clever and push like hell if we want to score.
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Be clever and push like hell | Jean-Eric Vergne blog