There’s not much better than the feeling you get at shakedown for the start of a season. It’s always great when the guys and girls who have worked together to build this fantastic machine get to see it drive out of the garage and onto the track for the first time. It makes all their hard work and long hours over the winter so worthwhile.

There was a great sense of anticipation at Silverstone, despite it being really, really cold – to be expected I guess, it was February. Everyone was excited to see the FW44, especially me.

The only problem is that this was the first time I’ve been to a launch or shakedown since I was racing in Formula One six years ago, so all I actually wanted to do was get in the car. Watch out Nicky and watch out Alex, I’m coming for you!

The new car is very different, in fact, extremely different. I know there are new regulations but I expected the cars to all be very similar; the FW44 is definitely different to what I expected! It’s very cool.

In my time, I’ve done shakedowns out in Barcelona, Jerez and Valencia, but sometimes we did it here at Silverstone; it’s always tricky, always touch and go whether you can get the mileage in. Thankfully, we did just that.

The weather soon started to clear, it had been awful when we went out in the tracking car, you could literally see that there were lakes on the track. It’s never the best to do a shakedown when the circuit’s drenched, especially with a brand new car with very different rideouts to what they’re used to running.

Before long, the FW44 was pounding around Silverstone and let me tell you it looks absolutely wicked out on track; lovely in the garage but when you see it at speed, it looks great, so very well done to everyone in the team. On the whole, shakedown was pretty good for us. As I mentioned earlier, it was great for the whole team to come together and get this car out on track.

A week on and the excitement levels haven’t diminished. With the pre-season track session in Barcelona this week, where we thankfully have some nicer weather than we were treated to at Silverstone, we should be able to get it up to full speed and see where we’re truly at.