I just landed in London after leaving Spain on the Sunday afternoon right after the race. I'm waiting for my connection right now so I can be on my way back to Hong Kong.

Todays race turned out nothing like I had planned. It was really strange as the car went from handling pretty well throughout the weekend, to a really bad handling car during the race.

We had a debrief with our engineer Sven and my team-mate Jiri Janak, after the race. There were alot of questions as to what happened to our pace. Both Jiri and I struggled with the car in pretty much the same form. I drove the car as hard as I could today, but there just wasn't any grip in the car.

Instead of moving forward and overtaking cars as I had originally planned, I ended up having to defend and fight the cars behind me.

From the start of the race, I had a decent start. I overtook Hozler but Alzen had overtaken me into the first turn. Starting from 18th position, I can tell you that the first lap is completely full of chaos!! Cars are fighting everywhere, hitting each other, cars going off the track, and you can't afford to give up an inch. However, right from the start of the race, I was fighting with my car more than the competitors. It was a very difficult car for me to drive which made the race really hard for me.

I do admit, I can learn to drive a bad handling car better as this is an important skill to have as a race driver, but I did the best I could out there today and no matter what I tried, my car fell off the pace more and more each lap. At the end, we finished the race in 18th position out of 29 cars.

The difference is, if I had the pace and was attacking other cars, 18th wouldn't be the worst. We wouldn't be at all pleased with that, but at least we would know that we were out there fighting. But since I just lacked the speed and was barely hanging on to 18th, it doesn't feel good at all and it even makes me a bit angry.

We had a good chat with the team after the race, and we all agree that we must do better for Turkey. The team has a single goal to improve our performance in the Supercup so I feel that is very positive. You can look to see a stronger performance in Istanbul in 2 weeks time. There is no other option than a better result!!!

Talk soon! bye!

It's never easy to get it 100% right in qualifying. I thought I always understood the joys of getting a pole position. You drive a great lap and you're number 1 on the leader board!

Supercup has brought a completely new meaning for me on the topic of qualifying. With the top 20 cars within 1.2 seconds in qualifying this weekend in Barcelona, it has brought me a whole new appreciation for a good qualifying result.

Today, I qualified in 18th position. Sounds horrible doesnt it? Actually, the truth is, I didn't have a horrible lap. The fact is that you just need to get it 100% right or you're going to find yourself in 18th position. That's how competitive it is now! It is the hardest championship I have ever faced and maybe will ever compete in. Thats why I love racing in the Supercup!

There are so many things to take into consideration in preperation for qualifying. The perfect car setup that will give you the traction you need, a clear track so that there are less distractions to allow you to drive that perfect lap, a clear mind from the driver so that you have 100% focus, and lastly, the perfect tire pressure that gives you the optimum grip so that you can fully utilise your new tires on your 2 flying laps!

We haven't been able to put all the pieces together to get that lap we need to get near the top 5, but we're always SO close. If you look at the time charts from todays qualifying, if I had gone only 0.3 seconds quicker, I would've been inside the top 10. If I had gone 0.6 seconds quicker, I would've been inside the top 5.

Today, we didn't get the tire pressures correct when it mattered most. It's always hard to figure out the tire pressure. I learnt this first hand last weekend in Shanghai when I had to make these decisions on my own without an engineer.

The track today was the best on the first 5 laps of the session. It is hard to give you a definite reason why, it could be track temperature or various other reasons, but one thing was clear, I had to get it right on my first 3 laps of the session. Most drivers got their quickest time in the first 2 laps of the session. I tried to push hard on my opening lap but I couldn't get my tire pressure heated up quick enough. This led me to miss getting my fast lap time when the tires were at the optimum. My fastest lap came 2 laps later, but I made my own mistake and ran a bit wide on the last turn losing myself 2 tenths of a second on the last corner. Those two tenths could've moved me up about 4 or 5 positions.

On a final note, the team and I are going to have to work hard to improve our qualifying in order to have a chance to win these races in the near future. I trust the team to make improvements in their departments, but my key focus will be to drive the perfect laps and put all my fastest lap sectors together in a single lap. It will clearly need to be a team effort to move us up the leader board!!

Tommorow is going to be a fantastic race. I'm going to push hard in the race and I am hoping a good race setup will give me the chance to move up during the race. Posted below is the times from todays qualifying session in Barcelona. Wish me luck for tommorow!

1 23 Seyffarth, Jan 1:50.190 + 0:00.000

2 28 Ragginger, Martin 1:50.253 + 0:00.063

3 10 Bleekemolen, Jeroen 1:50.575 + 0:00.385

4 21 Watts, Danny 1:50.599 + 0:00.409

5 14 Rast, René 1:50.605 + 0:00.415

6 24 Mamerow, Chris 1:50.626 + 0:00.436

7 3 Armindo, Nicolas 1:50.773 + 0:00.583

8 2 Rosina, Stefan 1:50.857 + 0:00.667

9 15 Siedler, Norbert 1:50.888 + 0:00.698

10 1 Zampedri, Alessandro 1:50.925 + 0:00.735

11 27 Huisman, Patrick 1:50.938 + 0:00.748

12 20 Faulkner, Damien 1:50.958 + 0:00.768

13 26 Saelens, David 1:51.043 + 0:00.853

14 25 van Lagen, Jaap 1:51.075 + 0:00.885

15 17 Janak, Jiri
Schnabl Engineering 1:51.092 + 0:00.902

16 22 Edwards, Sean 1:51.179 + 0:00.989

17 29 Holzer, Marco 1:51.199 + 0:01.009

18 16 O'Young, Darryl
Schnabl Engineering 1:51.284 + 0:01.094

19 5 Alzen, Uwe 1:51.403 + 0:01.213

20 11 Petiz, Pedro 1:51.473 + 0:01.283

21 12 Verschuur, Mike 1:51.521 + 0:01.331

22 4 Mangs, Jocke 1:51.828 + 0:01.638

23 7 Bleekemolen, Sebastiaan 1:51.865 + 0:01.675

24 9 Guerrero, Lucas 1:52.008 + 0:01.818

25 19 van Splunteren, Paul 1:52.212 + 0:02.022

26 8 Buijs, Tim 1:52.487 + 0:02.297

27 18 Frederiks, Simon 1:52.520 + 0:02.330

28 40 Coimbra, António 1:54.281 + 0:04.091

29 6 Dagilis, Nemunas 1:56.262 + 0:06.072



The continued search for the perfect tire pressure (photo courtesy of www.racecam.de )

My new gear that just arrived in Spain. Two new helmets sponsored by Bell, painted by Red Bull. Racing suit and shoes are supplied by a new sponsor of mine, Adidas Motorsport. Check their stuff out at www.race-boots.com



Random sights while going through Barcelona on Thursday evening.



My team mate, Jiri and I, found this restaurant while walking through the city. Great Pasta!!!

The first race back over on European soil for the 2008 season. It's great to be back here because I really love Barcelona. It's such a beautiful city and I especially like walking around the shopping districts and the Port area.

I didn't get much chance this weekend but my team-mate and I did manage to get to the city for a quick dinner. I just ate some risotto and had a salad on Thursday night.

I was pretty tired from the travels as I had to fly into London then transfer onto another plane to fly down to Barcelona. I think the total flight time was around 18 hours so after going straight to the track and doing my usual routine, I was ready for bed on Thursday night. I slept very well and was glad to get to the race track on Friday morning in preperation for Friday afternoon's practice.

The result from practice wasn't exactly what you would call good, but based on the times being so close, there is definitely room for improvement for tommorow's qualifying. I ended up in 19th position out of 29 cars, but if I had only gone 2 tenths quicker, I could've moved up 6 positions. That shows how fierce the competition is here where every tenth of a second could equal up to 5 or 6 positions on the starting grid.

I feel much more confident on this circuit than I did a year ago, so that is definitely a good sign. I had a long debrief with my engineer after the practice today and we have made some decisions for setup changes on the car. We are struggling a bit on the high speed corners so we are trying to make the car more stable in that area. I'm going to review some more data on my computer tonight before I sleep, and hopefully I can find all the weaknesses so that tommorrow I can make the small improvements needed to qualifying in the top 10.

To see the results and full time sheet, go to www.racecam.de, and remember to catch the race this sunday on Eurosport.

Wish me luck for qualifying. ADIOS!!!

The photo's below are taken from practice today. They are courtesy of www.racecam.de

I got back from Shanghai last night. As some of you know, I'm really into music, so I had the pleasure of going to the Wyclef Jean concert last night. It was quite an exclusive concert with about 150 guests in attendance. He put on an awesome concert and he really suprised me just how good of a performer he was. He is very talented with a number of different music styles and I was also impressed with his passion for performing as he put on a 2 hour concert when he was only meant to come on for about an hour. I got up to the VIP area after and was able to meet the man himself. It was great to meet him because I'm especially a fan of his from the days back with Lauryn Hill and the Fugees. It was a great way to spend 1 of my 2 nights home in Hong Kong.

Tommorrow, I head off to Barcelona for the next round in the Porsche Mobil 1 Supercup. My next 3 races of my season will be for the Supercup in Barcelona, Instanbul, then one of my favorites, the Monaco Grand Prix. I feel really motivated to put in a good performance at the Spanish Grand Prix and will work really hard in every session on the track. For those that have Eurosport, the race will be broadcasted live no matter which country you're living in, so try to catch the race on Eurosport. If not, follow my progress right here on www.darryloyoung.com.

See you soooon in SPAIN!!!!!

Below is a picture of me and Wyclef Jean...