“Simply fantastic this circuit, and if you get 53 laps more, you appreciate it even more. It’s made by God’s hands.”

The bottom line is what we do might not be the safest so there is always some risk but we are ready to take that into account because we love racing and we love motor sports and it is dangerous.

At the end of your life, it’s friendships, emotions and thoughts that you take with you, rather than what’s in your bank account.

Simply racing a Formula 1 car is an achievement.

Teams like Ferrari, McLaren and Mercedes are going to be very, very motivated to go for the titles.

I remember my first test in F1. After five laps, I came back to the pits and tried to play it cool – ‘Oh yeah, I’m fine, I’m on top of this’ – but I was completely lost.

You can’t change what happened. But you can still change what will happen.

I found myself sitting in the RB7 and smiling.

Thanks to BMW and WilliamsF1 for giving me this chance to test. The test team looked after me brilliantly and I learnt plenty.

I don’t care too much what happened in the past.

You can’t always say what you’d like to say.

Whenever I have to do something, I try to minimise the time it takes me to do it. I just cannot wait.

I prefer to focus on what is coming next and I am really looking forward to it.

After 10 weeks away from Formula One, when they started the engine here at Valencia and everything was vibrating,

If the boat started shaking, we stayed on course and didn’t lose focus. That made the difference.

When you walk the track and you see a corner and realise you were going round it at 160mph, you wonder who could be so stupid to take a corner at that speed. But in the car, you don’t even think about that.

So, even though people don’t have a lot here, they are a lot richer in many ways and we can learn from that.

I loathe hecklers. I haven’t got a good syllable to say. When you come out of the club circuit and into the concert hall, they should be gone.

You have governments investing in circuits all over the world, and the private sector sometimes has a tough time competing with that.

There’s something special about racing in real streets. The ‘artificial’ circuits have a certain sameness to them.

There’s that process of writing it – then you come out of your room into the sunlight, and you now have to complete the circuit and make the connection finally with the audience.