This is the nicest track in the world, something which I think all drivers would agree on was Luca Badoer’s enthusiastic summing up of how much he is looking forward to this weekend. In the Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro media centre, the journalists were keen to see how the Italian had dealt with some negative remarks about his performance in Valencia.

“I have not read the newspapers, because I imagined I would come in for criticism after the first race,” he admitted. “I was aware of it because the Ferrari Press Office kept me informed. But as I said, in Valencia, I did everything and more than was on our programme. Now, the programme moves forward this weekend and I am calm about everything.”

Since the last race, as part of the preparation for this weekend’s Belgian Grand Prix, Badoer and his engineers have also studied the race data from the race in Spain last Sunday and Luca felt that the signs were encouraging.

“Looking back at Valencia I can tell myself that I made a good start, moving up as high as 14th place from last and my lap times improved. By the end, the gap between mine and Kimi’s best lap times was eight tenths of a second, an improvement on earlier in the weekend. And then, if we move on to my ideal lap time, (putting together a driver’s best split times to make one lap) the difference between me and Kimi was only two and a half tenths. The race distance helped me to improve and to get more confidence in the car. It was important as I wanted to do all the laps, driving to learn. All in all, it was not such a bad weekend in the end.”

“Valencia was very difficult for me: it combined the three worse things together, it was a new track for me, it was a street circuit, with walls just centimetres away and I hadn’t driven the car for ten months or even raced for ten years. So I found it hard to understand all the criticism I came in for. As for Spa, I know it, I like it very much as a track, I went well when I raced in Grands Prix here in the past and so I should therefore definitely go better at Valencia. I now know the car which should also be a help."