By Ian Lockwood
June 23 2011

Mark has already arrived in Valencia for this weekend’s European Grand Prix. It’s a race in which he hasn’t had much luck in the past and he’s hoping to put that right in Sunday’s 57-lap race.

“I was on the front row here last year,” says Mark, “but I then had the accident with [Heikki] Kovalainen in the race. It was a nasty one, but I’ve done a bit of racing since then and it’s not an issue to return here. I look forward to getting started and I think we can be competitive this weekend – that’s our goal.”

The Valencia Street Circuit has more corners – 25 – than any other circuit on the Formula One calendar. It has some similarities to the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve in Montreal because it has lots of slow corners and long straights, and, as a result, it’s very sensitive to DRS and KERS.

“This is probably the most sensitive track of the year so far in terms of DRS and KERS,” says Mark. “You’re going to need them along the long straights and, unlike in Montreal, we’re likely to have a dry race on Sunday so we’ll get to see how back-to-back DRS zones work out.”

Mark will have to deal with a slightly different technical programme this weekend, following a change to the technical regulations. Teams are no longer permitted to change the engine mapping on their cars between qualifying and the race, and a bigger change is scheduled for Silverstone in two weeks time, when off-throttle diffusers will be banned.

“As a team, we’re not overly concerned by these changes,” says Mark. “I don’t think they’ll have a big effect on the shape of the championship battle, but it would certainly have been cheaper for everyone if we’d been told about them before the start of the season. Everyone was looking at these areas of development over the winter and it’s much more expensive to make changes now.”

For the statisticians among you, Mark’s current total of 94 points is one more than he had at the same stage last year, when he led the championship.

“The lay of the land is very different this year,” says Mark. “Seb [Vettel] has had a phenomenal start to the season and everyone else has got their work cut out to reel him in. It would be good to start doing that this weekend!”