Our new car, the EJ15B, will be making its debut at the Italian Grand Prix. After the initial hiccups and teething problems, which delayed the launch, the EJ15B has proven to be reliable enough to race this weekend.

We will be racing only one new car at the Italian GP. Unfortunately, I lost the coin toss which means Tiago Monteiro gets to drive the new car.

The EJ15B is a far superior car than our existing model. It behaves lot better under braking.

The car is very stable and generates a lot of down force. You can really feel the difference in the fast corners as it runs much smoother and better, and you can afford to be a little more aggres- sive.

It will really help us to challenge some of the other cars on the racetrack. Monteiro could be quite competitive in the new car and may come up with a good result.

I was quiet satisfied with my practice run on Friday. I was using the old car and was only 0.2 second behind Monteiro in the new car and ahead of the Minardis.

I like the Monza circuit a lot. It’s the fastest in the racing calendar.

We do a lap here at an average speed of 250 kmph and my top speed in the practice session was 356 kmph. That is the fastest I have driven in my life.

It’s a pretty easy circuit with only 10 corners and lots of long straights. The fans here are very passionate and support only one team ? Ferrari.

It will be good to see how they plan to go about the race since they will be having a lot of home support.

The Bridgestone tyres that we are using, have been continuously making progress and it has been encouraging to see them doing well.

I am sure they will be narrowing the gap between Michelin and themselves with every passing race.

My last race in Turkey went off really well. I had engine problems, which saw me start the race from the back of the grid.

I ran a consistent race and finished ahead of my teammate who had started the race several places ahead of me.

I was recovering from a flu in the past two weeks and hence haven’t done a lot of training, but we did manage a lot of car-testing.

I drove 70 laps on the final day of testing and we were very satisfied with our performance.

The McLarens again look the strongest of the lot. Kimi Raikkonen will be favourite to win the race in Monza.

He will need all the help from Montoya to help close the gap between him and championship leader Fernando Alonso.