Hot on the heels of Bahrain came Spain, with another routine race (ultimately a comfortable win), albeit I risked everything by not paying attention and setting a potentially disastrous pit stop strategy!
Having qualified on pole, I misread the number of laps as 55, and set myself up for a two-stop strategy (two long stints on hard tyres with one final stint on soft tyres). Unfortunately for me, the race was in fact 66 laps!
I did eventually realise this – looking at the screen, as I reached 33 laps, I was suddenly in trouble! My ‘short’ stint on the soft tyres was in fact going to be my longest stint of the race. The hard tyres could just about do 20 laps – there was no way the softs would last 26!
I had little choice but to soldier on. As the laps ticked by, the front tyres in particular began to degrade at an alarming rate, and I found myself around five seconds a lap slower than I’d been. With around four laps to go I made the risky decision to pit – hardly ideal, but luckily I had a big enough lead to my rivals to emerge in the lead and take a win that was vital to my title chances – the gap to me and Button now reduced to nine points.
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