Sky Sports' Rachel Brookes recounts long but rewarding days reporting from the Barcelona paddock for the Spanish GP
Tuesday 19 May 2015 13:43, UK
For this race I was working for Sky Sports News HQ so my week is very different.
It begins earlier, for a start. We flew out to Barcelona on the Tuesday and first thing on Wednesday morning we headed to the circuit to film for our Pastor Maldonado piece. I had requested an interview with him because he has had such a tough start to the season and it was three years since his surprise victory in Spain for Williams.
I have to ask him about his nickname "Crashtor Maldonado" but he takes it very well and says he always gets blamed even if it's not his fault. We film the guys setting up his garage and then I record a "piece to camera" on the grid with the start lights behind me. I time my line to coincide with the light sequence and needless to say it took a few takes! We also film the paddock as the motor homes are built, furnished and polished. It is the first time we have seen them this year and it always makes for some nice pictures.
We then go to our on-site office and I write the script for the piece according to the answers from Pastor that I want to use and the pictures we have shot. Once that is done I record the voiceover in a quiet corner - not always easy to find at a race track! We load everything onto a laptop and my cameraman and I start to edit the piece together. Once the piece is finished we send it in to the office via the internet. It is missing a couple of pieces of on-track action which are kept in an archive back at our base so I send an accompanying email with details and some very kind person puts them in so the piece can get on air on SSNHQ as soon as possible.
Once back at the hotel more of the SkyF1 crew have arrived. Our hotel in Barcelona is right by the Nou Camp and on Wednesday evening there was a Champions League semi-final against Bayern Munich. A few of us decided to take a walk down to the stadium to soak up the atmosphere and I wanted to buy something for my nephew whose birthday is next month. I had just bought his present when we noticed one of the ticket windows was open. We asked if there are any seats left for tonight's game and there were! The next thing I knew l was sitting inside the Nou Camp listening to the Champions League music playing as Barcelona and Bayern Munich made their way out onto the pitch. After a goalless first half the home fans were getting restless. But then it happened. Messi scored at home. I have been to a lot of sporting occasions but the noise generated by the 90 thousand-odd Barcelona fans was incredible. When Messi scored the second, with his wonderful run, the place erupted. I can't wait to watch the game back because in that stadium, at that moment, it all happened way too fast for me to appreciate. A 3-0 win for Barcelona meant only one thing. A sleepless night for all of us. My room was on the 11th floor but I could make out of every Spanish word of the song being sung down on the street outside the hotel at 3am.
A return to Europe doesn't just mean the return of the shiny motorhomes, it means the return of the early alarm call, too. An 05.30 wake-up on Thursday morning and a half-hour journey in our hire car to the accreditation centre. We have passes for the whole season but each race we have to collect a car park pass and a sticker for our camera. Without them we can't get into the track and we can't film anything either.
Thursdays are always very busy but great fun, too. It's often our longest day of the week as we start early and finish late. We start with a live into Sky Sports News HQ to set up the week, show where we are and what's going on and what we are expecting from the weekend ahead. At 10.15 local time we have an interview arranged by my producer Emma with Carlos Sainz in the Red Bull energy station which is also home to the Toro Rosso team. He is eating his breakfast as we arrive and seconds before our interview his trainer gives him an espresso-sized cup of something very green! He holds his nose and downs it but grimaces. "What was that?" I ask. "I don't know but it's horrible! All my greens I think," which might explain the expression on his face in the photo from our interview! Sky Sports News HQ is on in the background and I explain that is where the interview will appear shortly.
Sometimes we have no choice but to pre-record interviews. In Formula One every minute of a driver’s time is accounted for. If a press officer says you can have an interview at 10.20 for five minutes then you know the driver will be there at 10.20 and be gone by 10.25. So if for any reason the studio can't come to you at 10.20 you know you have to pre-record the interview to be played out as soon as possible. It's always fun, though, when you are in a motorhome and an interview plays out on their big screens while you are stood nearby having a coffee. Their other guests always do a double take!
The interview goes well. Carlos is a really nice grounded guy who comes across very well. He tells me the story of coming to this circuit as a little boy and meeting his idol Fernando Alonso and telling him he wanted to drive one day. It must be quite something for Carlos to be such good friends with someone he idolised as a child. I find out after the race weekend in an interview with Fernando that he holds their friendship in very high regard too and thinks he has a special talent - more on that later.
Thursday involves lives into SSNHQ and driver interviews. This is the first time we speak to them over a weekend so the topics can be varied!
The day ends around 7pm and even though we have been on our feet all day we decide to walk the track. It's an incredible perk of the job. Sometimes we run it for fitness but if you really want to understand a circuit the best way is to walk it. The first thing that always strikes you is how much elevation there is. For example, at the Circuit de Catalunya it doesn't always come across on TV but the climb from turn two to turn three is much greater than you realise. We also all remark on how much of a descent there is at the end of the lap as you turn in to the start-finish straight or try to make the pitlane entry - which also helps us understand why Nico Rosberg then went the wrong side of the bollard during practice! Some of the drivers are out on track tonight, too. Marcus Ericsson passes us a few times as he cycles some laps of the circuit before heading home.
On Friday we arrive at the track well before first practice so we can do some live updates which also include some of the interviews we did the night before. Then I find somewhere to watch practice and I suggest during the session that we try to speak to Franz Tost of Toro Rosso as they look good on single-lap pace around here so far. That's the beauty of F1, a team looks like it has made progress and you can drop the press officer a quick email with your request and before you know it an interview is arranged.
All the circuits have big press rooms for us to work in but sometimes we stay and watch the sessions in one of the team motorhomes, where they very kindly supply us some much-needed caffeine! I have two radios on, one has a feed of Sky Sports News HQ on it and the other is our commentary team. Before second practice on Friday I am about to do a live on SSNHQ and as I hear the studio presenter talking to me in my left ear, in my right ear I can hear Ted Kravitz talking about more engine problems for Daniel Ricciardo and engineers scratching their heads in the garage. By wearing both radios at once I can immediately relay that to our Sports News' viewers so they have the very latest information.
The drivers all have a meeting on Friday evenings at the track about any concerns they have about the race weekend ahead. Afterwards on this occasion is a Grand Prix Drivers’ Association meeting. Most of the drivers are members but not all. Romain Grosjean tweets that they are going to announce in Monaco plans of ways to better interact with fans. That helps shape Saturday morning for us. I ask Alex Wurz who is chairman of the GPDA if he will give us an interview and he agrees. Not only do I ask him about the plans for more fan interaction but I also ask him about Nico Rosberg - they were team-mates at Williams and Alex tells me that Nico will be back, don't worry. (How right he was!)
I also ask one of Valtteri Bottas' managers, Didier Coton for an interview about Valtteri's future. He tells me that there is no relationship and have been no discussions with Ferrari at the moment. He also says Valtteri "could definitely be at Williams" next year.
Also on Saturday morning I decide that for one of my lives with SSNHQ I want to show the motorhomes that fill the paddock once we get to Europe. We start outside Mercedes and walk down the paddock as I talk through what you can see. My cameraman is walking backwards at this point and as one person who visited the paddock for the first time this weekend said to me: "I have never seen so many people walking backwards in one place!" As we reach McLaren Jenson Button suddenly appears and walks across to the McLaren garage. He sees the camera and gives us a thumbs-up and a hello. The drivers are all very amenable. They seem to understand television better than most, if not all, other sports people I have come across. Maybe it's to do with the fact that the sport and the drivers themselves rely so heavily on sponsorship that they appreciate the value of coverage. Whatever it is, it works and whenever I seem to do a piece to camera as a driver walks past they always acknowledge us in some way.
On Sunday I got to finally put to bed the rumours of Ferrari being interested in Lewis Hamilton as I interviewed Maurizio Arrivabene. He told me they were not talking to Lewis Hamilton and that if they were interested in Valtteri Bottas it would be in the "future future".
Just before the track parade we position ourselves outside the FIA garage so as to catch as many drivers arriving as possible. It's one of my favourite parts of the weekend as there is no script and absolutely anything can happen. The studio hands over to me and as they do Nico Rosberg disappears among a crowd of guests behind me. So I start talking and hope others will soon appear and sure enough they do. My cameraman listens to what I am saying to make sure he picks out the right driver as I mention them and I try to help by saying things like "as you see Daniel Ricciardo there Jenson Button is just arriving to my left " - the cameraman knows that means JB will be on his right any second. Roberto Mehri comes through and is centimetres from the camera lens as he does, I am not sure how that will have looked but it all adds to the atmosphere. It's five minutes of unscripted chaos but great fun and hopefully you enjoy it, too.
After that we make a very quick dash to grab some lunch from our catering. It's on the other side of the track though so we have to go through a tunnel, out the other side and over the bridge. Getting to it is through the fan area and in Barcelona there are always a huge number of British fans. It's so nice to meet so many and it's lovely to hear familiar accents. Apologies if we are always in a hurry but we have a 20-minute window to refuel for the rest of the day ahead! Thank you to everyone who stops us, though, or asks for a picture. It's easy to forget when you look into a black lens all day that there are actually people watching and it always gives us a boost to meet you all.
Lunch onboard, it's a quick live to tell everyone the race is about to start then we watch on monitors in the interview area or "the pen" while we wait for drivers to retire. In this case we managed to watch the start inside a team hospitality and stay for a few laps as the race was retirement-free for a while.
When in Europe most of our crew fly home on the Sunday night. We always stay until the Monday in case there is a story to follow up but this time I have a very good reason to stay. We have been given a 10-minute interview slot with Fernando Alonso in Barcelona on Monday afternoon so my cameraman and I change our flights. He is at a sponsor event for most of the day in the blazing Spanish sunshine. It is the fifth time I have interviewed him in five days so I need to think of new things to ask and new ways to word questions he will no doubt have heard before, but I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't ask them too. He seems in a good mood despite his retirement on Sunday. It's a little windier than I expected and as he sits a huge gust gets up and I almost have my own Marilyn moment in front of the two-time world champion. "It's ok, I didn't see anything" he says.
Phew! Because I wouldn't quite know what to ask to follow that if he had!
RB
