It's brilliant. To have that first season to put yourself in the shop window is very important. But to get that chance to drive for a works team and one of the most famous names in motor racing is a nice pat on the back and a nice sense of achievement. It’s what every driver wants.

I was at the factory yesterday (Monday) and met everyone there. They were talking about the new engine and the new car and everything is looking good. But as we have seen before you can make progress and everyone else makes progress and your progress can end up looking pretty unspectacular. It’s up to me and Antonio to work hard and help the team move forward.

I think potentially the team will be more conservative with the R4. They have a good understanding of where the R3 went wrong and that car was done by people who aren’t at the team now. But as we have seen in F1 in the past something like that can have a long-term effect on a team. However, Niki’s optimistic that things are different and that everything is in place for Jaguar to make progress.

I’m going to have to! Everybody took a big swallow when the new rules came through but after three of four races everybody will have got used to it. Everybody has a chance of getting it wrong if the weather doesn’t go your way which is going to make things interesting. Qualifying for me was the most enjoyable part of racing last year and I’m looking forward to it. I’m actually in favour of the new system. It’s going to be spectacular and highly pressurised.

We’ll see whether it’s going to be points or going to be podiums. We’ll set our own goals at the end of January when we first run the new car. I scored two points and finished 15th this year with Minardi and I’ll be disappointed if I don’t beat that! We could get a couple of podiums or we might not have the car to do it. We’ll have to wait and see.

From a history point of view I think I prefered the old points system because you know if you got a sixth and scored a point it really meant something and you’d really earnt it. But for the teams and manufacturers it is obviously better. They have done it for the guys at the back of the grid and its going to be good for people like Paul (Stoddart – Mark’s old boss at Minardi).

Yeah, he did a good job, but he’s had his chance and to be honest I haven’t got a lot of respect for what he says anyway.

Yeah it did. There were some races where you didn’t know whether you had got the best from the car because sometimes Alex wouldn’t even qualify. Sometimes he did a good job but it was not really on a consistent enough basis.

I think it was pretty crucial as to why we did get the drive. Antonio didn’t just come down with the last shower in terms of driving F1 cars. With Williams he’s done seven or eight days straight at Barcelona and then moved on to Valencia in the past. So he knows F1 cars pretty well. I’ve just done my first season of F1 with Minardi and I think it’s a good combination of someone with experience of a top team and someone who has got a season of racing under his belt. Obviously. I think it’s a good decision and I’m really pleased Antonio’s alongside me. I don’t think I could ask for a better team-mate and we’re both going to push hard to make the team better.