What an amazing weekend.
I was up at 3 am Friday morning to fly out from Heathrow, arriving in Belgium around 10am. After collecting are rubbish Citreon Berlingo hire car and a satnav we headed off to the circuit. As usual we got to park right be the entrance in the media car park and strolled straight in and headed to the paddock. Following a brief meeting with the BBC and the guys from McLaren we grabbed some lunch in the McLaren hospitality. After lunch we went for a wonder round the paddock before getting to sit in the back of the McLaren garage in the booth for P2. I've done this before, but never with McLaren. They're happy to let you take pictures and video for personal use, something which I've never had from any other team. I also had a decent chat with Gary Paffett. He really wanted to play the game, but he missed out by half an hour as we had to format the consoles before sending them back via courier.
You can really see why McLaren are so successful. They're so anal about every little detail in every single area of their operation. It's amazing to see. Everything is perfect, even the food!
A quick picture of me with Lewis.
Around 4 we had some work to do, if you can call it that. I can't go in to it now, but you'll all get to see the results in a couple of weeks time. Best of all I got to spend 2 hours with Lewis. Away from all the cameras and pressure he's a really nice normal guy, as are pretty much everyone you meet in the paddock. I got loads of pics and HD video on the iPhone, but unfortunately I'll never be able to post them anywhere. Because what we were doing ran on for a lot longer than it should, the McLaren team cooked us up some steak for dinner, by which time it was around 10pm.
Saturday we were guests with McLaren, who once again, couldn't have done anymore for us. Plenty of great food and drink was on tap all day. We didn't really do a massive amount on Saturday other than enjoy the qualifying and chat with people we knew. In the evening we went out for pizza with the 5Live crew, Crofty, Ant Davidson, Holly Samos and Jason Swales. I've not laughed that much in ages, Crofty has no shame.
Sunday was obviously the race, so we had a decent breakfast at the hotel and headed out to get there for mid day. When we got there we grabbed some lunch in the usual place, then got ourselves a nice spot on the inside of La Source. After the first couple of laps we moved further down to watch them come out of La Source and head down towards Eau Rouge. With a couple of laps to go and the rain coming down we went back inside to watch Lewis take the win. We then celebrated with team with some free champagne, and hung around for the team photo to be taken. It was really cool to see how tight they are as a team. Everyone wore red McLaren t shirts, and Lewis, Jenson, Gary, Ron and Martin were all mixing with the rest of us. When the press arrived for the shoot it all got a bit hectic, but it was still pretty amazing to be there to see it all kick off like that.
Anyway, if you could be arsed to read all that, here's a few pictures from the 3 days.
The gallery is here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/rodstreet/sets/72157624840266130/
They're not great, as I struggle in changable light conditions!
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4116/4941923084_2cdeef3b21_b.jpg
If you look at the full sized version of this image you can even see Lewis's eyes through his visor.
The start
For some reason I love this shot.
I was stood on a chair at this point, and still couldn't clear all the press.
Finally me holding the winners trophy!!!!
I was up at 3 am Friday morning to fly out from Heathrow, arriving in Belgium around 10am. After collecting are rubbish Citreon Berlingo hire car and a satnav we headed off to the circuit. As usual we got to park right be the entrance in the media car park and strolled straight in and headed to the paddock. Following a brief meeting with the BBC and the guys from McLaren we grabbed some lunch in the McLaren hospitality. After lunch we went for a wonder round the paddock before getting to sit in the back of the McLaren garage in the booth for P2. I've done this before, but never with McLaren. They're happy to let you take pictures and video for personal use, something which I've never had from any other team. I also had a decent chat with Gary Paffett. He really wanted to play the game, but he missed out by half an hour as we had to format the consoles before sending them back via courier.
You can really see why McLaren are so successful. They're so anal about every little detail in every single area of their operation. It's amazing to see. Everything is perfect, even the food!
A quick picture of me with Lewis.
Around 4 we had some work to do, if you can call it that. I can't go in to it now, but you'll all get to see the results in a couple of weeks time. Best of all I got to spend 2 hours with Lewis. Away from all the cameras and pressure he's a really nice normal guy, as are pretty much everyone you meet in the paddock. I got loads of pics and HD video on the iPhone, but unfortunately I'll never be able to post them anywhere. Because what we were doing ran on for a lot longer than it should, the McLaren team cooked us up some steak for dinner, by which time it was around 10pm.
Saturday we were guests with McLaren, who once again, couldn't have done anymore for us. Plenty of great food and drink was on tap all day. We didn't really do a massive amount on Saturday other than enjoy the qualifying and chat with people we knew. In the evening we went out for pizza with the 5Live crew, Crofty, Ant Davidson, Holly Samos and Jason Swales. I've not laughed that much in ages, Crofty has no shame.
Sunday was obviously the race, so we had a decent breakfast at the hotel and headed out to get there for mid day. When we got there we grabbed some lunch in the usual place, then got ourselves a nice spot on the inside of La Source. After the first couple of laps we moved further down to watch them come out of La Source and head down towards Eau Rouge. With a couple of laps to go and the rain coming down we went back inside to watch Lewis take the win. We then celebrated with team with some free champagne, and hung around for the team photo to be taken. It was really cool to see how tight they are as a team. Everyone wore red McLaren t shirts, and Lewis, Jenson, Gary, Ron and Martin were all mixing with the rest of us. When the press arrived for the shoot it all got a bit hectic, but it was still pretty amazing to be there to see it all kick off like that.
Anyway, if you could be arsed to read all that, here's a few pictures from the 3 days.
The gallery is here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/rodstreet/sets/72157624840266130/
They're not great, as I struggle in changable light conditions!
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4116/4941923084_2cdeef3b21_b.jpg
If you look at the full sized version of this image you can even see Lewis's eyes through his visor.
The start
For some reason I love this shot.
I was stood on a chair at this point, and still couldn't clear all the press.
Finally me holding the winners trophy!!!!
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