With the first race ever to be ran at the Circuit of the Americas in Austin on Sunday, several drivers met to talk about the track and the event on Thursday. Pedro De La Rosa (HRT), Lewis Hamilton (McLaren), Sergio Perez (Sauber), Fernando Alonso (Ferrari), Sebastian Vettel (Red Bull Racing) and Kimi Raikkonen (Lotus) were all on hand to answer questions from the press. The transcript of the conference is as follows:

Gentlemen, a question to you all to start with: what are your impressions of the circuit so far; your feelings about being back in America. What it’s like to be back here?

Pedro De La Rosa:Good morning to everyone. I’ve just been doing a lap, just walking around. I don’t know much apart from this lap, and apart from what I’ve been able to see from the internet – from the lap Jérôme [D’Ambrosio] did in the Lotus -– and it looks fantastic… a very difficult track, with very big gradient changes and very challenging because most of the corners, the apexes are blind. So let’s see tomorrow, but it’s one of those tracks that you can say it’s going to be difficult and challenging.

Lewis, have you done anything on simulation?

Lewis Hamilton:Good morning everyone. Yeah, I think everyone’s done simulations probably. It’s quite an interesting track. It’s quite difficult to learn initially but it looks fantastic to drive. I really started to enjoy it once I got used to it, which took perhaps a little bit longer than some of the other circuits to learn but it’s going to be very interesting this weekend.