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17/10/2011
Vitaly Petrov – "I apologised to...
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16/10/2011
Bruno Senna - "I don't feel there...
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16/10/2011
KOREAN GP - RACE - LOTUS RENAULT GP...
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Monday
My race "weekend" was in fact a full week, which is perhaps because of the one-off nature of my special role in the Korean GP. I arrived at the Korea International Circuit together with support crew Mick Wilson and Stephen Leadbeater. (The rest of the team by this point was preparing to leave Japan.) Our job is to make sure that the freight boxes are received, unloaded, and then organised in the right manner so that the garage set-up can begin swiftly.
So, I began by meeting a member of the organising committee to check over the list of items we have ordered from the circuit for the garages and hospitality complex. This includes forklifts, which will be used to unload and unpack our freight boxes, and a generator, which will be used to provide electrical power to the garage throughout the week.
We managed to complete all the day's work in good time and treated ourselves to some Korean BBQ to wrap up the day.
Tuesday
We were joined by the setup crew who arrived in Korea on Monday. We stopped at McDonalds to grab a quick breakfast on the way to the circuit. The lady owner remembered us from last year – I suppose 20 odd foreigners dressed in the same kit in the remote city of Mokpo is pretty difficult not to take any notice of. I placed an order for what is probably the longest list of burgers and drinks and discovered my hidden flair in serving fast food. After the breakfast, we arrived at the circuit where set up work kicks off at full throttle. I got called upon throughout the day for things to follow up on with circuit liaisons and their contractors.
Coming back for the second time (as I attended the inaugural Korean GP last year in a similar capacity), I fully expected to be dealing with a range of things during the course of the week but I was not expecting to get called upon by the local police! It turned out that one of our hire vans had made a contact with another car in a car park after breakfast. I felt a strange sense of déjà vu as the police station happened to be next to a hospital that I visited with an ill mechanic during last year's Korean GP weekend! (…but that time in an ambulance!)
Catering guys borrowed me to go food shopping at a local supermarket for food for the team. The catering guys seem to have a habit of clearing a supermarket's stock pile. Of course, we were not the only team here so there was a bit of an off-track race for food as well. Strictly first come, first served. Pushing around several fully-loaded shopping trolleys, we managed to turn more than a few heads.
As the last task of the day, we visited the hotel where Vitaly and Bruno were staying for the Korean GP. The drivers were yet to arrive but their race kits from Japan had already been dropped off. Not only do they need to be laundered with specific instructions, the sheer quantity makes it difficult for them to turn it round within our requirements. We learned our lesson from last year and visited them a day earlier, saving us from having to get involved in some arm twisting at a local laundry.
Wednesday
The electricians from the circuit seemed to have trouble communicating with the teams. So when they found out that I was Korean, they grabbed me to talk to a couple of other teams that they had left to deal with. Other than that it was a relatively quiet day as far as my liaison role is concerned. So I helped the boys complete the garage set up trying not to get in their way too much in the process.
The hospitality team bought a lot of food to feed us and had been accumulating a small mountain of receipts written in funny squiggles. Fortunately, it does not take me long to decode these squiggles so Simona Legati can get on with her book keeping.
Thursday
To our horror, we arrived at the circuit to find that the generator had cut out overnight as it ran out of diesel. The original refuelling schedule published by the circuit proved difficult to maintain and our request to top up last night had not reached the right people. After a lot of arguing, we agreed on a protocol that will ensure that it does not happen again. The generator powers a lot of equipments garage that the cars' preparation and operation depend on. The last thing we wanted was for a power surge to damage our equipments when restarting or have a power cut in the middle of a session.
Later in the morning, I got to join the drivers and engineers for the track walk in the morning. This is a welcome opportunity for me to have a chat with them and learn a few things about the circuit.
I returned to the team building after the track walk to find a backlog of photocopying to be done. The menus were all in Korean and unwilling to give any hints as to what their functions are. Fortunately, unlike Robert Kubica's sat nav last year, there was an option to change the language to English – saving me from being a full time photocopy-man.
After the pit stop practices, we got an early finish at 6:30pm. This gave us a chance to revisit the Korean BBQ for some pork belly and a few beers.
Friday
Friday is one of the longest days of the week. It is the day when we have the earliest start time. While the mechanics and engineers were busy preparing for the first free practice, I headed to the hotel to pick up the mechanics' and drivers' overalls and the rest of the kit.
'My Home Race' article in the Korean GP Preview magazine sparked some interest among a few Korean reporters who wanted to have a chat. It's nice to know that our magazine gets good exposure. I hope that through this the Koreans will get to know our team better.
Saturday_ Throughout the morning I was on loan to the marketing department to pick up our guests who arrived in Mokpo by train. They were Mr. Jin Choi from Genii's Asia office and special guests from Mongolia.
Due to parc ferme on Saturdays after qualifying, Saturday is always a guaranteed (well, almost) early finish day. Parc ferme starts at 6:30pm, at which point the cameras in the garages take over from FIA marshalls who oversee the cars until that point. With little time left to this changeover point, the generator technicians had to carry out a maintenance check on the generators. This meant that the generators had to be switched off for a short while for the check up to take place. With time running out, I had to push them to ensure it was completed before the official parc ferme conditions commenced. Later, as I was leaving the paddock, I was told that a mix up between two other teams' resulted in one of the team's generator cutting out at the eleventh hour!
Sunday
By this time, most of my work had wound down as there was little trouble-shooting left to do (it would be rather worrying otherwise!). I just had to make sure that the generators had enough diesel to get through the race and the pack-up. The forklifts needed to have sufficient diesel for pack-up after the race, too – which, fortunately they did. This meant that I was able to enjoy the race day by showing some guests around and watching the race from the garage with the mechanics.
Once the race was over, I lent my spare pair of hands wherever I could with the pack-up. It is a brutal test of fatigue and willpower. Hats off to the race team who endure this about 20 times a year!
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