“The cars were bombproof, so I did a lot of miles during my two years with Mercedes. I learnt a huge amount during that time and not least from Bernd Schneider, who was like a big brother to me. He taught me a lot about car set-up and he polished me as a driver. Mercedes were a very disciplined outfit overall, so I learnt a lot about professionalism and that helped me a lot when I first got into F1.

What happened at Le Mans in ’99 has been well documented. It was a disaster for everyone involved, and what was particularly frustrating was that Bernd and I had done some slipstream work at Fontana early in the year without any problems. I walked away from the first crash, which I thought was a freak accident, so I didn’t have any qualms about getting back into another car. After the second crash, however, I felt differently: I knew there and then that I had to get back into single-seaters. The last time I got out of a Mercedes sports car was when it was upside down.”