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IT'S been a quiet week, not much going on really, had a bit of time to myself, signed for Red Bull Racing, did some training, finished seventh in the Italian Grand Prix nothing special. You know, the usual.
OK, some of that isn't entirely true: the last few days have been incredibly hectic – but in a nice way.
Everyone's very curious to know how I'm feeling right now. It's exciting for me, but judging from the number of texts, calls, interviews and well-wishers I'm getting the impression that there's plenty of people prepared to be excited on my behalf as well. That's fairly weird.
But for the record, I'm feeling pretty good.
For anyone wondering if the deal has been done for ages, I can say categorically that it hasn't – or if it has, nobody told me.
I found out last Wednesday. I was working in the simulator at Milton Keynes, putting the Toro Rosso through its paces for Monza. Christian called and asked if I could pop up to his office for a couple of minutes and when I did he gave me the news. It was all pretty relaxed.
Obviously there's been a lot of positive talk and a huge volume of rumours in the last two months. You hear those – you can't not – but I wasn't going to get excited until I heard it from Christian or Doctor Marko.
Now it's done, I think the attention and the pressure will fade way. Getting back in the race car on Friday in Monza, knowing my future is sorted out was a relief and a comfort and I could get on with pushing the Toro Rosso to its limits around Monza and ensuring we have a strong end to the season.
From now on, I'll be more relaxed – not too relaxed – and able to focus 110 per cent what I've got to do in the remaining seven races to get the most of the car.
My crew at Toro Rosso have congratulated me – but equally all of them have come up at various times and told me not to forget about them just yet.
There's no way that's going to happen. My motivation to finish the season strongly could not have been higher anyway, but knowing I won't be with them next year just adds another dimension to that. I'm going to scrap for every inch.
I know how happy everyone here is when JEV or I score points, and I want to give them a lot more before I go.
After all the fuss over my 2014 move, I'm glad that Monza was a positive weekend for me: finishing seventh matches my best result of the year up til then, which was back in China.
We knew from the Belgian Grand Prix two weeks ago that we had found some encouraging pace in the car. In Spa, we wasted it by getting our qualifying strategy wrong, but in Italy, it came good.
Sure, I could maybe have qualified one place higher, because I did make a tiny mistake on my quick lap, but I was pleased with seventh on the grid.
In the race, I had to be really disciplined, because we knew we had to play the car's strength which was its good top speed. It meant that while we were really quick down the straights, I had very little aero downforce so the cars behind could close up every time we got to the middle section, the one with the slower corners.
So it was a very tactical race and there was quite a train behind me by the end, but I kept it together and was happy to see the flag.
We need to build on this now, because there's just seven races left. They're all going to come really quickly and involve a lot of travelling, starting with the night race in Singapore. It's about the nearest I'll get to Perth for a while!
