“We always kept believing in ourselves and our team and the car.”

There are a few things that make me angry. Mostly things not going my way.

I come from an ordinary family – my dad is a carpenter, a roof-maker – and we’ve always loved racing together.

Qualifying is all about putting everything that you have and that the car has in one lap. It’s like a rush, I really enjoy that.

It’s a tricky place, especially the last sector. I wasn’t happy in practice. I wasn’t happy with the car and I wasn’t happy with myself. But I always thought there was more in the car.

I didn’t know Dan Wheldon, but he was big in motorsport, and then this year I got to know Marco Simoncelli, so our thoughts are with them at the moment.

All these nice people saying I’m going to be world champion won’t make me any faster, you have to believe it yourself.

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.

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

We’ve just kept the ship running y’know what I mean? You change engineers from time to time and as long as everybody coming aboard knows what direction the ship is, everything’s alright.

Actually, I have a lot of hobbies, but I’ve kept up with model-building the longest. In particular, I love military models.

It is all about numbers. It is all about sequence. It’s the mathematical logic of being alive.

But what I kept wondering about is this: that first second when she felt her skirt burning, what did she think?

I probably would’ve kept slogging on that same chord change, because there’s a tendency to have that happen.

More than the Jews have kept Shabbat, Shabbat has kept the Jews.

More than Israel has kept the Sabbath, the Sabbath has kept Israel.

I grew up without a lot of money and my parents grew up with far less money. And that’s kept me in line. Really in line.