IN THE LAND OF BLACK GOLD - Grandprixplus

on the grid by Joe Saward
tired but emotional...
As we go into the final stretch in the Formula 1
World Championship of 2012, the Grand Prix circus
is looking a little battered. There is coughing and
snerching all over the place as nasty germs with
totalitarian ambitions from Korea, India and the
Middle East get into pitched battles with cleanliving
Anglo Saxon antibodies.
It has been a long season: eight months of
travel and for most of us more than 100,000 miles
of flying. I was asked the other day to do some
sums about the travelling that we do in F1 and
discovered that by the end of the season we will
have flown the equivalent of four and half times
around the world, just to get to the F1 races. That is
about 190 hours of flying, which is eight 24-hours
days, or 24 eight-hour working days. Or at month
in “the office”.
And that is without doing any flying
other than going to the races. If we go to tests,
presentations, meetings or holidays that adds to
the total.
The time changes are fairly gruelling as
well, not to mention the travelling diets and the
weird working hours. Last week I work up at two in
the morning on three consecutive nights, asleep
on the bed fully clothed. And there was no alcohol
involved on any occasion!
We are all a bit weary and a little tetchy but,
you know what? We all love it. We would not do it if
we didn’t like it, because there are endless lifestyles
that are easier and less stressful. Years ago when
our colleague Gerry Donaldson wrote a book called
“Grand Prix People”, about the characters one
meets in the sport, Bernie Ecclestone described F1
in very simple terms: “They’re all a bit mad, aren’t
they?” he said.
He was right.
The F1 circus attracts unusual people
people. For years I used to write a short feature
every week about someone in the F1 Paddock. I
would wonder around, pick someone I did not
know and wander up and say: “Hello, how did you
get here?”
There were the most amazing stories. I have
met motorhome girls with two university degrees;
security men with Masters degrees; there are
photographers who used to be TV directors and
decided to try something different. I never cease
to be amazed at the talents that I uncover.
We call it the F1 circus and that is the
perfect description because it is a world of people
who were not made to work from nine to five. We
are all happiest when we work in frantic bursts, in
all manner of conditions. That is the fun.
I put my passion down to three things: I love
characters; I love travelling and I love motor racing.
I figure that the travelling is down to a childhood
spent reading National Geographic, looking at
pictures of wildly exotic places and poring over
maps, wondering what it would be like to steam
down the Zambezi or visit the iron mountains of
north west Australia.
I love the eccentricities of my fellow F1
“villagers” and of course at the bottom of it all is
the passion for racing. Even after all this time, it is
still a magnificent and magic thing. In last week’s
GP+ Toto Wolff described F1 as like gladiators with
machines and that is a great description. These are
tough, talented guys, driving fantastic machines
dreamed up by boffins who should really be
working with missiles or spacecraft.
By the time you read this we will be on
planes heading west to the dawn (yes, it is possible)
and next week we’ll all be in Texas.
Bonkers, but magnificent.
v
4