It was great to open my 2008 points account with fifth place in the sprint race at Istanbul Park – although I was lucky not to get caught up in the race’s big talking point.

 

That race will always be remembered as the one where two dogs ran onto the circuit, with Bruno Senna unfortunately hitting one.

 

I had been running ahead of the iSport driver at the time and was the first car to come across the dog he ultimately ran into.

 

As I was coming over the brow of the hill on the back straight, I suddenly saw this white thing – which obviously turned out to be the dog – come running across the circuit.

 

At that point you are doing almost 175mph, so by the time you see it you are basically already on top of it.

 

Thankfully I just had enough time to react and I went all the way over one side of the track and slightly onto the grass to miss it.

 

Obviously Bruno wasn’t so lucky and the impact put him out of the race.

 

Looking at the video afterwards, he just didn’t seem to move – but I think that was because he was probably looking at my car and by the time he spotted the dog he had no time to react.

 

Afterwards of course you think for a couple of seconds, ‘what the hell is that doing on the circuit?’ as you don’t expect these sorts of things to happen.

 

But you soon regain your focus and get on with the race – which is what I managed to do to come home in fifth.

 

It was a pleasing finish to a weekend that didn’t actually get off to the best of starts.

 

Although I was one of several drivers to pick up a grid penalty for passing yellow flags in qualifying, I was going to start down in 15th place anyway.

 

We used the harder tyres again in Turkey and I don’t think we are quite on top of that compound yet.

 

Thankfully, though, as the weekend went on, we slowly developed the car and got more out of the tyres.

 

In Saturday’s feature race I recovered from a mistake at the start to work my way up to ninth at the flag.

 

One place more of course would have got me a point and pole position for race two, so in many ways it’s the worst place you can finish – but you have to take the positives and our pace was good.

 

It was even better of course on Sunday, although we made only small changes to the car’s set-up overnight.

 

What helped this time was a much better getaway off the line.

 

I think I underestimated in the first race how much grip there was, so in the second I made sure I got it right and the result was a much cleaner start.

 

I stayed clear of the first-lap chaos and moved up to fifth straight away, where I stayed despite the dog moment.

 

In the end I finished just a couple of seconds behind race one winner Giorgio Pantano and I think the team were happy with our race pace.

 

They were really encouraged by the fact for most of the race we were quickest through the lap’s second sector, until Romain Grosjean went faster late on.

 

Monaco is next up this weekend – and after the team won there last year they are fairly confident of going well again.

 

It’s a race that pays you back if you keep your car on the island. You can easily finish in the top five if you keep it all together.

 

Last year there were so many incidents and plenty of retirements.

 

Unfortunately I was one of them on my first visit, sliding out on cold tyres following a pit stop.

 

But I’ve learnt from that and I, along with the team, go there with optimism following our Turkey result.

 

Qualifying will be crucial of course as it is difficult to overtake, but as we are using the soft tyres we should do okay.

 

Now I just can’t wait to get out there on Thursday for the start of practice.