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“The track is a special one and in terms of difficulty, it’s right up there,” said Mark after a positive day one at Suzuka

“The sport has a long heritage in the country and Suzuka is a fabulous place to drive an F1 car. It’s one of the tracks that every driver looks forward to driving because it’s so challenging and it punishes mistakes,” says Mark as the cars prepare for the opening session of practice this morning.

“The pace of the car was good and I thought I could pick up a podium at this stage of the race,” says Mark. “I always enjoy dicing with Fernando, but it was difficult to do too much proper racing due to the tyres.”

For the second race in succession, Mark’s race went up in flames, this time as a result of a wayward Adrian Sutil running into him.

“We had to take a bit of pace out of the car for qualifying, not much, but it was about how to compromise between qualifying and the race tomorrow.” explained Mark after qualifying third for tomorrow’s South Korean GP. Mark however, will start 13th due to his 10-place grid penalty.

“We need to have a car which can be strong in the first sector, so we can get some overtaking done,” says Mark after Friday’s two practice sessions.

“Overtaking is normally possible around here,” says Mark, “especially if you’re out of position – as I will be. But I enter every race weekend wanting a top result and it’s always easier to achieve that if you start at the front.”

In the third part of the ‘Getting to know Aussie Grit’ series, Mark picks out his favourite sectors from the F1 tracks he’s raced at to put together his ultimate F1 circuit.

“This is a very physical race, so it was very disappointing to put in all that effort only for it to come to nothing so close to the chequered flag,” said Mark after his race ended a lap short of full distance.

“I think I did pretty much everything I could today,” said Mark after his hopes of a podium finish were dashed during the closing stages of the race when he was forced to retire with an overheating engine.