And we're back.

I wasn't very good at keeping this place up to date last year, sorry. There was lots to talk about, too:

• Pastor's difficult summer - although, to be honest with you, I didn't know how to express my feelings over that one. I was so disappointed that I had to take a step back from him for a while, and in turn that meant I stepped back from here because I didn't really know how I felt, so I couldn't put it into words. I have a post saved in my drafts still, but I couldn't bring myself to post it until I knew what he was going to do next, in case he just kept making things worse. So it wasn't a fun few months to be a Pastor fan. When even *I* lose my patience with him, that really says something. He slowly gained my trust back at the end of the season though. It's a clean slate for us in 2013. Let's see what happens. I can't bear to be let down again.
• My brilliant trip to the Hungarian Grand Prix
• Marshalling at Donington for the first (and second) time
• The WEC weekend (and the bright orange builder hats we had to wear in the pitlane)
• Almost being runover by a McLaren MP4-12C in the pitlane. I had to physically leap out of the way. It wasn't even my fault, I promise.
• Alvaro Parente - I remember him driving his socks off at Spa in 2010, but I saw him at a few races this year and that boy is speeeeeeeedy. He also smiles at marshals, which puts him in the top few percent of racing drivers. (We're real people too, and we've gone out of our way to give up our time for you, Mr Racing Driver. Stop looking through us like we're not there.)
• Alonso vs Vettel. I was on Alonso's side, but Vettel earned it in the end
• That last F1 race (wow. Still wow.)
• 750MC Birkett - you might not have heard of it, but it's pretty cool. I'll talk at you about it whenever you want.
• I finally took my trainee badge off - I got my signature so I can upgrade to being a Specialist Marshal!

That's just off the top of my head. There's probably a thousand other things too. I haven't even mentioned Jenson... and I always mention Jenson.

In 2013 I've already missed my first blog opportunities. But seeming as I'm here now, I'll quickly try to catch up...

The Johnny Herbert Karting Challenge took place back in January for the first time in a couple of years. It was so good to be back. We always used to be based in London, but this time we were at the Birmingham NEC during the Autosport Show. It was very different to what the 'old guard' were used to, but it was a brilliant evening and we raised a lot of money for the Alzheimer's Society, in memory of Dan Wheldon. A lot of Dan's family were there and it clearly meant a lot to them. I ended up with three racing drivers on my team - Declan Jones, Ramon Pineiro and Dillon Battistini. They were great - very fast, very friendly and very good humoured about being stuck on a team with a few very slow drivers (e.g. me). They did an amazing job dragging us up the order and we ended up only one place behind Team McLaren! That can't be bad in any racing situation, surely? We also finished one place ahead of How2's Gareth Jones, which is always my personal goal for every JHKC. (A victory dance may have taken place).

My other main 2013 racing excitement comes courtesy of two of my 'one-to-watch' young British drivers. First off, Jack Harvey is in GP3 this year. This puts him back in an F1 support race for the first time in a couple of years, so he'll have a better chance to hopefully catch the eye of an F1 boss or two. One rung up, the infamous (in my social circle, anyway) Adrian Quaife-Hobbes has a GP2 seat for 2013. He too is back amongst the F1 circus, and after winning the AutoGP championship last year (go Quaifey!) I've got a really good feeling about him. I am so proud of these boys, I've supported them for a couple of years and they're both really going from strength-to-strength.

I've not booked F1 tickets yet this year, but I'm sure I'll end up at a race somewhere or other. I don't think I can pass up the opportunity to cheer on Jack and Quaifey as well as all my F1 favourites. Just need to work out the logistics of it.

I've got quite a lot of marshalling booked this year (luckily my new bloke is very happy to accompany me to Silverstone at the weekend so I didn't have to compromise too much!), including all my usual favourites: WEC*, Blancpain Endurance Series, Silverstone Classic, BTCC. I'm really looking forward to getting back onto the pitwall.

There are also plans afoot for my first trip to the Goodwood Revival in September. I just have to figure out what to wear!

Meanwhile, my next bit of fun is at Silverstone later this month, when Dad and I are taking the little MGB out for a spin on the GP circuit. It's been a year or two since I've driven Silverstone so it'll be good to be back on track. I'll try not to take the phrase 'out for a spin' too literally. I'll report back on that one.

No really, I will report back this time.

Over and out. x



*Oh my, I just love WEC. Being surrounded by Le Mans cars for a whole weekend is one of life's little highlights.

Zooming through what I've missed out...

So I've actually been doing all sorts of things lately, and I've just been lazy about writing about them. So here goes:

* I marshalled at the Aston Martin racing day at Silverstone. I was in assembly, which was great because we had lots of races coming through our area and there were lots of pretty cars to look at. When it's a busy weekend, I love being in assembly. It's fun pointing them all in the right direction and making sure everyone ends up in the correct order. And then you get to look at all the beautiful cars, and the drivers/team folk are all around so you get to chat to some of them. (On a quieter weekend, you can end up with a 4 hour lunchbreak... which is less good. You want to be doing stuff!)

* Oh I did some other marshalling too, can't even remember what it was for, but I managed to almost collapse on the pitwall. They called on the radio for a doctor to come and check me over, and then the next thing I knew there was all sorts of sirens and 2 medical cars and an ambulance turned up and 4 men came rushing into the pit office to see me. Of course, once I'd sat down and had some water I'd immediately started to feel better, so I was a bit sheepish about all this fuss! Anyway, they popped me in the ambulance and took me to the medical centre just to make sure I was OK. Which I was. I'd just had what a lady in the medical centre referred to as "a whoopsie". I think next time I'll push for a helicopter ambulance. That's pretty much the only facility I didn't get to check out.

* I went to see Martin Brundle do a talk for a roomful of us marshals. It was great, really interesting listening to him talking through his career (although he'd been talking for an hour and he hadn't even got to a time when I'd been born yet!) and then he answered questions about the new Silverstone wing (which had been opened that day), being a TV pundit (he requested that DC did the comms job with him), the gridwalks (he claims to hate them) and things like that. It was really cool, and I'm very grateful that my manager let me leave work an hour early so that I could make it in time!

There was a second guest speaker after Martin, who was John "The Kilt" Kirkpatrick. I must admit I'd never heard of him before, but he was utterly fascinating. Whoever turned up to see Martin and then disappeared before John started (which was most people) really missed out. He's been a really influential figure in how the motorsport industry has been shaped over the past (many) decades... he was involved in teaching drivers like Jenson Button how to drive a racing car, he seems to know absolutely everyone within motorsport, and he's currently involved in getting motorsport to work with other industries - e.g. defence, sharing engineering intelligence etc.

* I was incredibly lucky, and thanks to my very good friend Claire, I was able to see the SENNA film 2 weeks before it was actually released to the general public. And, as everyone is finding out now that it's in the cinemas, it is INCREDIBLE. I learnt a lot about him and about his career (I don't ever remember watching him drive, 1994 was about when I started to watch F1). And the footage that they found was just breathtaking - from the onboard shots to the quiet conversations with Ron Dennis (boo) to the FIA driver briefings (Ballestre - the perfect pantomime villain!). Well, I'm not going to do a full film review here - if you've seen it, you know. If you've not seen it, then I imagine you're planning on seeing it ASAP.

* While I was at the SENNA preview, not only did I have an electronically reclining seat, 1 seat away from where the film's writer was sitting - but I got to see the bloke that gave me my whole career direction. He works in F1 and I once called him up completely out of the blue for career advice, because as you know - I want to work in motorsport one day. He didn't have to be nice or help me, but he did. We had a couple of conversations, and I was in that petrified state where I'd just graduated from uni and was thrown out into the big wide world of work and didn't have a CLUE what I was meant to do or where I was meant to start. He gave me that clue. He made me realise what the first step was, and without that I wouldn't have got my job now. This was almost 2 years ago, and I've never met this guy before, but when I approached him and explained he remembered me and it was really nice to finally be able to say a proper thank you.

* I went to another marshals evening, where the guests were the GT1 team SumoPower. I then went marshalling for GT1, in the pitlane for the Sat and Sun, and was assigned the SumoPower garage to watch over. I'll write about that separately, because I now adore Sumo so have much too much to say about that!

* Le Mans 24 and the Canadian GP this weekend! Hooray! F1 Quali's just about to start now...

* Next weekend Johnny Herbert's driving at Donington. Think I'll get myself a hotel room and some tickets and make a weekend out of it. :)

OK, The Chain's just started playing on TV..... I'm signing off for now.

Over and out.

Maldonado at Melbourne (and other stories)

So, today was his first race. And he made it past the first corner!! Phew.

From what I could see, it looks like he was slow off the start, BUT he kept out of trouble (unlike his teammate, who gave me near heart failure as I saw a Williams trundling across the gravel in the background, it took a few seconds before I could figure out which one of them it was).

The slow start meant that Pastor lost a few places off the line, but the good news is that he started making them up. He zoomed up to and past Kovalainen with ease (admittedly the Lotus is a lot slower than the Williams, but still!) and around lap 5 or 6-ish he was over 2 seconds behind Perez. He just ate this time up, cutting around a second a lap out of the gap, and then was past him before you could blink an eye and pulling away immediately. Brilliant.

And then disaster struck. The next thing we saw, his car was stopped out of the way at the side of the track. The good news is that he hadn't done anything wrong. But the car had just stopped working. Transmission failure on lap 9. Rubbish :-(

If the car had worked and he had kept out of trouble, it would have been a decent result I think.

Unfortunately, instead he'll just show as a DNF, and the folks on the TV just glance over how he "didn't finish" which makes it sound like he screwed up. Brundle's complete disregard of him was really winding me up this weekend. I guess I'd better get used to it though.

What we need is just a few quiet, solid results under everyone's radar to start with, to build up his skill and confidence, and then we'll be alright. I have no idea if Pastor will be able to live up to my faith in him. But I hope so. I've stuck by him for several years and he's only got better and better so far, so fingers crossed. I know he's not perfect, but perfect's boring...

Meanwhile, Rubens had a mixed race. His bounce across the gravel dropped him down, but he stormed through the field.... until he then stormed into Rosberg, whoops! The Williams was strong enough to keep going after a quick pit, but eventually they retired from suspected transmission failure too. Hmmm - not good on the reliability front today, boys! BUT we've seen that the Williams has got some pace, which is a good start for the season.

Pastor: Quali 15th / DNF (Transmission failure)
Rubens: Quali 17th / DNF (Transmission issues again!)

Thanks to the Williams website for providing info (as the BBC didn't give a damn what had happened to Pastor's car).

(Apparently I care an awful lot about Williams now.)

***************************

In other news from the race....

• People on Twitter are blaming Johnny Herbert (the Driver Steward this weekend) for JB's drive through. Gah. I'm pretty sure he wasn't the only person involved in that decision. I also don't think it was the wrong decision. (Sorry Jenson, love you, but...!) 
• Di Resta did good, which is nice
• Sauber's one stopping was a bit of a surprise, eh?? I wonder if there's something special about the Sauber or whether the other teams will have a big re-think about the tyres now?
• DRS looks a bit of a crock. Jenson was activating it to pass Massa, but then Massa was just KERSing to get away again. Hmm. It looks cool when the wing flap opens though. But less cool when nothing visible then happens.
• Massa needs to get out of Ferrari. I feel very sorry for him being a #2 driver as if it's the Schumacher era all over again. Also, it's sad that the BBC have seemingly lost all interest in him - no Rob Smedley this weekend!
• I enjoy JB going back to the clean-shaven look. A beautiful boy, inside and out. 
• DC's dislike of EJ seeping into on-screen mockery is more embarrassing than entertaining/funny. Especially with EJ's over-reations to everything DC teases him about.
• Eddie Jordan being BBC's "Chief Analyst" is an utterly ridiculous situation. "Well I think he COULD find the button. I think he was joking." - said with total seriousness in response to Vettel's blatant cheeky comment about why he hadn't used KERS. Or "They've got KERS. I don't know why they've got KERS but there you go." Calling him a chief analyst is a bit of an insult to the viewers, really. I don't particularly mind having him there as an adding bit of entertainment and fun, but c'mon - chief analyst?!?
• Why did Webber's car stop straight after he crossed the finish line??? Does anyone know??? Why did the BBC post-race coverage not even mention it?! It shows a chink in the Red Bull armour - I was a bit fed up they didn't find anything out about it.
• Talking of Webber, as I said on Twitter - he must be annoyed today. Vettel even beat him to the first on-screen swear of the season!

OK, I think I've brain-dumped enough. That's how for now!

Two quick thoughts....

1. As I mentioned in an earlier post on here, when I was little I told someone that when I grew up I wanted to be a "pitlane blonde" (you'll have to read it for that comment to make any sense)  


Well, admittedly I'm not really blonde, but in my own little way, this weekend was kinda it wasn't it? So, there's another of my dreams come true:

To top off a great day, I got given a free hat! Can't complain.

2. Formula One-wise, I grew up supporting Johnny Herbert. I supported Ricardo Zonta too. I've supported Jenson through some tough years. Same for Mark Webber. I support Timo and Bruno and 'Bob' (ALG). As such, I'm used to celebrating the minor victories - finishing ahead of your teammate, getting some points, maybe the occasional joyous day of getting a podium. A rare win thrown in just to make the world sparkle.

And yet right now I find myself in a truly bizarre - and yet wonderful - predicament. My favourite F1 driver is the REIGNING WORLD CHAMPION. (Yes, it's totally worth shouting it in capitals. I would shout it out loud in the street all day if I didn't worry about getting arrested for disturbing the public peace). 

And my favourite GP2 driver is the BRAND NEW GP2 CHAMPION. 

This is AWESOME. I think I'm just going to sit and soak it up while I can.  Because after a lifetime of supporting the underdogs, I still can't quite get used to this. :-)

from www.gp2series.com

Spa - GP(naught-point-)2

So, as I mentioned - I went to the Grand Prix at the Spa-Francorchamps circuit. It was utterly amazing. I genuinely gasped the first time I saw Eau Rouge looming up in the background, and we stayed to watch the start of the F1 FP1 from the F1 Village so that we could watch the cars go up Eau Rouge, and it was incredible. My friends and I just looked at each other with ridiculous grins on our faces every single time a car went up that amazing hill...

A photo will never do it justice. Especially not this photo.

Anyway, I'll talk more generally about the trip and about Spa later. But first things first - let's talk about GP2. The GP2 was ace.

Of course, it didn't start so well. The cars were only out for a few minutes of the practice session on rainy rainy Friday before someone crashed and the rain was so heavy that the red flag came out and stayed out. We watched the time just tick away until the session ended without the track being open again. Such a pity.

A little while later, it was time for qualifying. Race Control decided to go for the world record of number of red flags shown in one session. There were at least 4 red flags. It should have been a 30 min session, but there were so many breaks that it lasted at least twice that long. In fact, one break was so long we walked all the way from Pouhon back to Eau Rouge (via the F1 lorries and the blimp) before the green light came back on in the pitlane. It was tense but good, and Pastor ended up third which was acceptable.

Pastor on the big screen, Eau Rouge at our side.

Saturday dawned (with the occasional spot of sunshine), and poor Herck had his pole position taken away from him for yellow flag related naughtiness. This put Pastor onto the front row, which is where I like him to be. The race wasn't exactly straight forward for Pastor on Saturday, in fact it was his toughest race of the season. He put in a very solid performance from the start and JUST managed to leap ahead of Jermone d'Ambrosio at the pitstop. It was heart-stopping stuff, but he came out his box mere centimetres ahead of d'Ambrosio who'd pitted at the same time. (Alternative rubbish blog titles: "DAMN, Brosio!" or "Ooh ahh, it's d'Ambrosia")

Pastor wasn't quite in the lead though- Alvaro Parente was out front, but he still had to pit, after which Pastor would be P1. But before he could pull away from d'Ambrosio, something went a bit wrong with Pastor's car. We've not found out what went wrong, but his way of describing it in the press conference was that something in it was 'rubbing' and so he started to lose time and d'Ambrosio caught and passed him again.

Interestingly, Pastor says that he let Jerome through without fighting him so that he didn't lose time battling. It was a long-term strategy for the race - letting d'Ambrosio through, sacrificing 2 points and hoping that the trace of smoke spotted coming out of the rival car earlier in the race would turn into something bigger.  This was judged to be a the lesser of two evils when the other alternative was to fight the attacking moves from d'Ambrosio, stress the car out with the defensive driving, get caught up by the rest of the field, and probably get passed for the win (and more?) eventually anyway due to the lack of pace from the broken car.

I admit my initial reaction to this was - "WHAT?!". Pastor is a racer and a fighter and he does not give things up easily. This is what caused him to crash out of so many races in previous years - his inability to let go once he'd sniffed the chance of something. Admittedly he's tamed this wild streak immensely, but it still seems so un-natural to give away a win. (It sounds like the team told him he should, as Perez was out of the points at the time so it wasn't sacrificing too many championship points to his main rival).

But when I think about it, that one decision gave him the chance to win the race. If he'd lost any time fighting d'Ambrosio for that position, then they'd have lost time to Parente and Parente would have been able to simply leapfrog into the lead after his last-minute pitstop. And the smoke that Pastor had seen come from d'Ambrosio's car earlier in the race DID turn into something bigger - at one point, Jerome's car gave up the ghost and drifted to a halt. Pastor had his place back. And he was still a good 7 or 8 seconds ahead of Romain Grosjean, who was now third.

For a moment, everything was serene. Then with only 3 laps to go, Parente (who had started 19th and absolutely drove his socks off) came in to pit. Just as a few little spots of rain started to fall. He rejoined the track just in front of Grosjean - about 7 seconds down on Pastor. But Pastor's car was struggling round (the Eurosport commentators kindly referred to him as "a dead duck", but I don't think they realised his car was broken) and Parente was on the right tyres - tyres that are known to perform at their best for around about the first three laps. And he had three laps to go. He absolutely FLEW. He took three seconds out of Pastor's lead in the first lap. I swear my heart stopped beating.

When they started the last lap, Parente was a second or so behind Pastor, but he was driving like Billio. (I assume Billio drives quickly). When they came past us at Pouhon, Parente was only just a corner behind. I swear I stopped breathing. I peaked out at the track and the TV screens between my fingers for the rest of the lap - I couldn't bear to watch, but didn't want to miss it.

As they disappeared out of view, Parente was visibly catching Pastor - but Pastor was driving inch perfectly in the spitting rain, not over-driving, not panicking, just calmly putting his car in all the right places and getting it to the finish line as fast as he could. I resigned myself to the fact that Parente would overtake him, Pastor was powerless to it. Oh well. Second place wasn't bad, I guess. Let's try not to be too miserable when it happens. Don't let it ruin the weekend.

But Pastor kept going, kept holding on. He went deep into the Bus Stop and Parente got half a look, but Pastor still had it under control and managed to cross the line 0.2 seconds ahead of the other car. Wow. (Yeah, see, the blog title almost makes sense now..)

But it brings me back to a previous point - if Pastor had lost time by fighting with d'Ambrosio, then he would have been gobbled up by Parente with ease. So somehow, letting Jerome past ended up gaining him places. Funny how things work out in the end.

Pastor coming out of Pouhon

I must take a moment to say that both d'Ambrosio and Parente drove incredible races. Jerome was terribly unlucky that his car died on him, and Parente was immense to almost win after starting back in 19th. He played the game ever so well by waiting till the last minute to pit, and if he'd won then he'd have deserved it and even I would have (grudgingly!) admitted that. But Pastor drove incredibly well, and incredibly maturely, and if his car hadn't been slowed down a bit by the rubbing then he would have romped away into the distance.

Of course, whilst Pastor was racing for his life (well, for his title), all wasn't well with my other GP2 favourite, the unfortunate Sam Bird. Sam is an incredibly talented driver (I always tell people about how he was quicker than Jenson at a charity karting event a few years ago) but he's just having horrendous Johnny Herbert/Mark Webber luck this season. He can't catch a break. He's good at Spa and was looking forward to it - but he got taken out at the first corner of the feature race. I was a bit heartbroken for him. The sprint race wasn't much better. Roll on Monza... we've just got to keep the faith that one day he'll start getting the results that he deserves.

Also, we'd gone to all the effort of making him a sign and he only got to drive past it about three times...! Not that he'd have seen it at all, but it's the principle of the thing.

The world's most unimpressive sign - but I did draw it in the dark...

Incidentally, lots of people who left straight after the F1 quali and didn't stay for the GP2 walked past us to get out, and they would stop to read the sign. And they'd sort of smile, and then look confused, and then look blank and walk off. I felt like shouting after them all "Just you wait two years - then you'll know who the hell Sam Bird is!" But they were probably foreign so wouldn't have understood. ("Le oiseau? Je ne comprende pas!")

(And let's not talk of Sunday's sprint race. Pastor's car didn't last a whole lap, Sam had a miserable race and Johnny Cecotto (my second favourite Venezuelan) lasted five laps. And, to add insult to injury, Perez (second in the championship battle) won, so closed the gap up to Pastor again. I like to pretend Sunday's race didn't happen...! Thankfully, Saturday's race was awesome enough to make up for it.)

My pointless Pastor banner enjoys one of the best views on the circuit

The Flying Chin

This is what Joe Saward has to say about Michael Schumacher, in his latest blog:

Readers of this blog will know that I am not really a big fan of Schumacher. One cannot question his talent and it is impossible to argue about the statistics of his career, but no-one can force me to like the way he goes about his racing. I thought his manoeuvre on Damon Hill in Adelaide in 1994 was despicable. I was delighted when a similar move on Jacques Villeneuve at Jerez in 1997 failed. I thought his celebrated “parking” job in qualifying at Monaco a few years back was utterly underhand and not worthy of a great champion. In addition I have my doubts about the use of traction-control in 1994. The FIA could never prove it was used, but that does not mean it was not. This is all water under the bridge, but these are the things that create the impressions that people have of a driver. They will be taken into account when it comes to the history books being written, when the sycophants have disappeared and everything is being judged at face value.

It's like I wrote it myself.

Joe later goes on to mention how Schumacher never let his team mates have a fair chance. This is another thing that winds me up. I've heard people very close to Johnny Herbert talk about what it was like when Johnny was team mates with Schumacher. And it's just not cricket (or, indeed, sporting in any way at all).

And don't get me started on how much it riles me that having Schumacher back on the grid means that there is one less space in F1 for a youngster who's desperate to start/continue his F1 career and win his own world championship or seven....

Anyway, I didn't really want to start ranting about him. I just wanted to flag that Joe Saward basically stole the thoughts right out of my brain.

This is me...

Hello.

OK, so let's get everything clear before we set out. This is me:

* I'm a 24 year old girl, I started watching F1 when I was about 8 years old.

* I started watching F1 because I'm a big old Daddy's Girl. My Dad, like many Dads, used to work in an office till the evening time, and then evenings were over all too soon, so weekends were the prime time to see him. And I realised that he spent many of his Sunday afternoons in the front room (a room where I was only usually allowed at Christmas or Easter or when we had guests)... I figured out that this meant there was a couple of hours where I could not only spend time with my Dad, but also be in the room I didn't normally go in. I was eight. This was good stuff. I can still vividly remember sitting on the floor by my Dad's chair, looking up at the big old TV, asking Dad all sorts of questions about what was going on in the race.

* My long-term favourite racing driver is Johnny Herbert. He's who I began supporting back in those days of sitting looking up at the big old TV. It was Hill's heyday, and DC was up-and-coming... and then there was this Johnny fellow that didn't seem to get mentioned very much, but there was his name with the little Union Jack next to it and I started to follow his every move on the racetrack.

* Anyway, so that's the history. What about now? Well, I still adore F1. My second love is GP2. And then otherwise I just watch whatever motor racing you put in front of me.

* My favourite F1 drivers are: Jenson Button, Mark Webber, Timo Glock and Bruno Senna. And I have a fondness for Jaime Algersuari (Bob for short) because he's stepped up his game this year. I also love Pastor Maldonado (currently in GP2).  And of course, Johnny Herbert is still the man.

* Oh, and just so that all my cards are on the table: I'm not a fan of Schumacher or LH. I'm aware that they're both very good drivers. That doesn't mean I have to like them.

OK, that'll do. Everything else we can deal with as we go along. And plus, it's late, I want to go to sleep.

G'night!