Last weekend was my first time covering a championship as an accredited journalist, live at a race track. I was at the stunning Brands Hatch circuit in Kent for the BRDC Formula 4 series - a new championship packed full of future stars and exciting races.
I was covering the event for RichlandF1 and it was, overall, a great experience. It was a busy weekend and I seemed to spend most of my time away from the race track in a taxi. However it was a good learning curve and a good warm up for potential future prospects.
My long weekend started off on Friday as I was in London completing work experience at Car Throttle. I spent two weeks mixing working at home with travelling to their office in London, with the Brands Hatch weekend fitting nicely in between my two weeks at the website.
However Daniel Puddicombe - who was doing 'work experience' for Motors TV at Brands, but spent most of it covering the F3 Cup for RichlandF1 - and I spent most of Friday travelling down to the beautiful county of Kent, where we then spent a fair amount of money getting to and from the race track for a look around on Friday evening.
It proved to be a waste of time as the drivers I wanted to speak to where elsewhere and the timing proved to be all wrong. However, I still managed to get my first glimpse of the race track - before the weekend I had never visited it - and a look around at where my home would be for the next few days.
Our hotel was situated in Gravesend and in hindsight, it wasn't as close to the track as we first thought. It was £20 or so per night, per person so I wasn't expecting much but it was a basic base and was fine, I wasn't too fussed to be honest as I just wanted to have a lie down after such a packed day. Plus, it had free WiFi so what more do you want?
Saturday morning was an early wake up-call to head across to the track. It was a cloudy start to the day with a packed schedule of action - Formula 4 had practice, qualifying and a race to complete mixed in with a number of other series including F3 Cup and Britcar.
I got myself settled in to my position in the media centre, sitting in front of three TV screens. Two had live timing and race control messages from the track itself and the other was showing Sky Sports F1, so I could still keep an eye on the F1, GP2 and GP3 - although obviously when the F4 was on, my focus was fully on that.
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My editor Luke Smith - who you probably know of, if not see here - said practice wasn't really needed in my daily report so I watched the cars out on track from the back of the pit lane. Matt Bell was fastest from Charlie Robertson and Jake Hughes, with the practice session helping me get familiar with liveries and see the cars in action.
There was a short break before the F3 Cup qualifying where JLF1 guest blogger Alice Powell qualified third. Dan Puddicombe was on the case with that before F4 qualifying kicked off and I was in full flow.
The way the format for the weekend's article worked was that I would write out all the action in a RichlandF1 post but post it all at the end of the day, rather than updating it as the day went on.
I was a bit nervous about interviewing the drivers, some of them were younger than me but it was a new experience for me and I was hopeful that my questions would be okay and get some good answers from the drivers. However, I was confident in my research as I had spent hours typing up detailed notes on each F4 driver.
I first talked to Charlie Robertson, a title contender who has impressed so far in the series. Those of you in the UK may be familiar with him from Ginetta Juniors where he took the title last year.
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The interviews that I did on Saturday were for a number of different things. I did a few F4 driver interviews for RichlandF1's Rising Stars week alongside a track guide with Alice Powell and an interview with Alice for CarThrottle.
My interviews took place largely during the break between the F4 qualifying session and the start of the first F3 Cup race. I must say that my favourite interview of the weekend came on Saturday when I sat down to chat with Alice Powell. It was great to meet her, finally, and I was keen to thank her for the brilliant Powell Post blog's so far. She was relaxed and gave some great answers to my questions, you can check those out here and here.
During the F3 Cup sessions I was out and about, around the paddock taking pictures on my DSLR camera. These were for our daily reports and every now and again I went back to the media centre to upload them. Basically, there was a lot of fast-walking around and I was particularly busy on the Saturday.
The first F4 race was a good one with Pietro Fittipaldi taking his first win of the season. If you recognise the surname (which I would hope you do!) that's because his grandfather is 1972 and 1974 world champion Emerson Fittipaldi. In fact, the win for Pietro came 41 years after his grandfather took victory at the 1972 British Grand Prix at Brands Hatch.
I spoke to Jack Barlow after the first race for another RichlandF1 piece. The 18-year-old has raised eyebrows for all the right reasons so far, in what is his first season in single-seaters. He drove well all weekend to be honest and is definitely one to watch. It was a good 10-hour stint at the race track, check out how the F4 played out here.
Sunday morning was a slightly later start but still a busy day nonetheless - another 10 hours at the track. It was a day that I spent either reporting, taking snaps, interviewing or sitting in the media centre watching the F1.
I did watch some of the Hungarian Grand Prix but I missed the first half of the race due to a quick photo shoot with Alice Powell and taking podium shots for Dan's F3 Cup report. Prior to that, I had reported on the second BRDC F4 race of the weekend which saw Matthew Graham take victory from Jack Barlow - who made a fantastic last lap overtake - and Raoul Hyman.
After the first race of the day I also spoke to Jake Dalton, who went into the weekend as championship leader. He had a strong start to the season and showed strong consistency but had a torrid final race on Sunday - more on that later.
So I did watch the F1 with all the rest of the media - who seemed happy with the result. As the drama unfolded, there were numerous gasps or cheers at the likes of Grosjean hitting Button and Hamilton crossing the line, there was a good atmosphere.
Then it was back to reporting for the final race of the day and my final assignment. Jake Hughes won it after losing out on an almost certain race one win due to a mechanical problem. Diego Menchaca finished second with Matthew Graham in third. It was a poor race for Dalton who dropped from second to 15th, possibly with a problem. See the Sunday report for more.
The main frustration during the races was that there was no TV screen with footage from the track. All we had were timing screens and commentary which added another challenge to the mix. However there was live text updates which helped and I think I coped well overall in my first on-location job.
I'm proud of the work that I did over the weekend and, to be honest, managing to handle my first race weekend as a journalist - independently - on my own. It was such a busy weekend and I thought I coped quite well.
It may not be the paddock at Silverstone or Spa reporting on the Formula 1, but it was a really valuable experience and one that opened my eyes to what covering a race weekend is like. I know F1 will be on a bigger scale and everything else will be even busier, but I can't wait for the challenge whenever the door (hopefully) opens.
I met so many people over the weekend and some that I had known for a while over Twitter and seen their work. For example, I met James Dunford from 5GCreative, who was the first person to ever request my writing services for his site Track Reviewers after I launched my blog. I also met Alex Baldwin or AlexZAfRo on YouTube, I have been watching his F1 game videos for quite some time so it was great to finally meet him in person.
A greatweekend that can be described in a bucket full of different adjectives, but one that was a successful warm up for the future. A real eye opener and the first of many, I hope.
Follow me on Twitter, 'like' my Facebook page, check out my Google+ page and if you are on Linkedin, connect with me here.
My long weekend started off on Friday as I was in London completing work experience at Car Throttle. I spent two weeks mixing working at home with travelling to their office in London, with the Brands Hatch weekend fitting nicely in between my two weeks at the website.
However Daniel Puddicombe - who was doing 'work experience' for Motors TV at Brands, but spent most of it covering the F3 Cup for RichlandF1 - and I spent most of Friday travelling down to the beautiful county of Kent, where we then spent a fair amount of money getting to and from the race track for a look around on Friday evening.It proved to be a waste of time as the drivers I wanted to speak to where elsewhere and the timing proved to be all wrong. However, I still managed to get my first glimpse of the race track - before the weekend I had never visited it - and a look around at where my home would be for the next few days.
Our hotel was situated in Gravesend and in hindsight, it wasn't as close to the track as we first thought. It was £20 or so per night, per person so I wasn't expecting much but it was a basic base and was fine, I wasn't too fussed to be honest as I just wanted to have a lie down after such a packed day. Plus, it had free WiFi so what more do you want?
Saturday morning was an early wake up-call to head across to the track. It was a cloudy start to the day with a packed schedule of action - Formula 4 had practice, qualifying and a race to complete mixed in with a number of other series including F3 Cup and Britcar.
I got myself settled in to my position in the media centre, sitting in front of three TV screens. Two had live timing and race control messages from the track itself and the other was showing Sky Sports F1, so I could still keep an eye on the F1, GP2 and GP3 - although obviously when the F4 was on, my focus was fully on that.
.jpg)
My editor Luke Smith - who you probably know of, if not see here - said practice wasn't really needed in my daily report so I watched the cars out on track from the back of the pit lane. Matt Bell was fastest from Charlie Robertson and Jake Hughes, with the practice session helping me get familiar with liveries and see the cars in action.There was a short break before the F3 Cup qualifying where JLF1 guest blogger Alice Powell qualified third. Dan Puddicombe was on the case with that before F4 qualifying kicked off and I was in full flow.
The way the format for the weekend's article worked was that I would write out all the action in a RichlandF1 post but post it all at the end of the day, rather than updating it as the day went on.
I was a bit nervous about interviewing the drivers, some of them were younger than me but it was a new experience for me and I was hopeful that my questions would be okay and get some good answers from the drivers. However, I was confident in my research as I had spent hours typing up detailed notes on each F4 driver.
I first talked to Charlie Robertson, a title contender who has impressed so far in the series. Those of you in the UK may be familiar with him from Ginetta Juniors where he took the title last year.
.jpg)
The interviews that I did on Saturday were for a number of different things. I did a few F4 driver interviews for RichlandF1's Rising Stars week alongside a track guide with Alice Powell and an interview with Alice for CarThrottle. My interviews took place largely during the break between the F4 qualifying session and the start of the first F3 Cup race. I must say that my favourite interview of the weekend came on Saturday when I sat down to chat with Alice Powell. It was great to meet her, finally, and I was keen to thank her for the brilliant Powell Post blog's so far. She was relaxed and gave some great answers to my questions, you can check those out here and here.
During the F3 Cup sessions I was out and about, around the paddock taking pictures on my DSLR camera. These were for our daily reports and every now and again I went back to the media centre to upload them. Basically, there was a lot of fast-walking around and I was particularly busy on the Saturday.
The first F4 race was a good one with Pietro Fittipaldi taking his first win of the season. If you recognise the surname (which I would hope you do!) that's because his grandfather is 1972 and 1974 world champion Emerson Fittipaldi. In fact, the win for Pietro came 41 years after his grandfather took victory at the 1972 British Grand Prix at Brands Hatch.
I spoke to Jack Barlow after the first race for another RichlandF1 piece. The 18-year-old has raised eyebrows for all the right reasons so far, in what is his first season in single-seaters. He drove well all weekend to be honest and is definitely one to watch. It was a good 10-hour stint at the race track, check out how the F4 played out here.
Sunday morning was a slightly later start but still a busy day nonetheless - another 10 hours at the track. It was a day that I spent either reporting, taking snaps, interviewing or sitting in the media centre watching the F1.
I did watch some of the Hungarian Grand Prix but I missed the first half of the race due to a quick photo shoot with Alice Powell and taking podium shots for Dan's F3 Cup report. Prior to that, I had reported on the second BRDC F4 race of the weekend which saw Matthew Graham take victory from Jack Barlow - who made a fantastic last lap overtake - and Raoul Hyman.
After the first race of the day I also spoke to Jake Dalton, who went into the weekend as championship leader. He had a strong start to the season and showed strong consistency but had a torrid final race on Sunday - more on that later. So I did watch the F1 with all the rest of the media - who seemed happy with the result. As the drama unfolded, there were numerous gasps or cheers at the likes of Grosjean hitting Button and Hamilton crossing the line, there was a good atmosphere.
Then it was back to reporting for the final race of the day and my final assignment. Jake Hughes won it after losing out on an almost certain race one win due to a mechanical problem. Diego Menchaca finished second with Matthew Graham in third. It was a poor race for Dalton who dropped from second to 15th, possibly with a problem. See the Sunday report for more.
The main frustration during the races was that there was no TV screen with footage from the track. All we had were timing screens and commentary which added another challenge to the mix. However there was live text updates which helped and I think I coped well overall in my first on-location job.I'm proud of the work that I did over the weekend and, to be honest, managing to handle my first race weekend as a journalist - independently - on my own. It was such a busy weekend and I thought I coped quite well.
It may not be the paddock at Silverstone or Spa reporting on the Formula 1, but it was a really valuable experience and one that opened my eyes to what covering a race weekend is like. I know F1 will be on a bigger scale and everything else will be even busier, but I can't wait for the challenge whenever the door (hopefully) opens.
I met so many people over the weekend and some that I had known for a while over Twitter and seen their work. For example, I met James Dunford from 5GCreative, who was the first person to ever request my writing services for his site Track Reviewers after I launched my blog. I also met Alex Baldwin or AlexZAfRo on YouTube, I have been watching his F1 game videos for quite some time so it was great to finally meet him in person.
A greatweekend that can be described in a bucket full of different adjectives, but one that was a successful warm up for the future. A real eye opener and the first of many, I hope.
Follow me on Twitter, 'like' my Facebook page, check out my Google+ page and if you are on Linkedin, connect with me here.
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