Jolyon Palmer's GP2 Diary - Singapore

The only thing I don't like about Singapore is the flight over. The place is absolutely awesome. The hotel we stay in is in the heart of the city and we are able to walk wherever we want to go, which makes a nice change to endless miles in a hire car.

Firstly in GP2 every driver is fighting for his career, we are all looking to impress and are not paid by the team to do a job for them. I am in GP2 for one reason, to win as many races as I can and try and win the title. This year I can't win the title but I can still win races - every time I step into the car it is a chance to impress people in the F1 paddock. Of course I would love to help Carlin win the Teams' Championship as well now we are in a position to do that in Abu Dhabi. Secondly, after races such as Spa this year I am sure I don't owe Felipe anything. He is a very good driver and if he was to win the title I would be pleased for him but certainly he hasn't earned enough racing respect for me to compromise my own races to help him. The team did an amazing job all weekend and both of us were in a league of our own. Unfortunately we snookered each other into having no tyres for Sunday but with the way GP2 is at the moment you have to go for the better tyre strategy to be safe to win the race. As it panned out, our dominance was enough (25 seconds clear of Calado and 40 seconds clear of Dillman on the same strategy) to be comfortably 1-2 even on a more conventional strategy but these things are always easy to say in hindsight. It was very nice to receive praise and congratulations from many people in the F1 paddock as well over the weekend including Jenson Button and last year's champion, Davide Valsecchi. A real benefit of racing in GP2 is that influential people are watching the races and seeing what goes on. It was great to be able to provide an entertaining race for the viewers as well and I think GP2 really does a really good job with no overtaking aids. On Sunday night it was nice to be able to go out and celebrate, to complete a really good weekend. I woke up the next morning feeling a bit worse for wear and had to head straight to the airport for the flight home. After a bumpy 14 hour flight I now realise that there is one thing worse than the flight over to Singapore... the flight back! JP Follow Jolyon on Twitter: @JolyonPalmer