Friday's Blog from Hockenheim - Blogpost

By Liam Clogger on Saturday 24 Jul 2010 and tagged with blog, hockenheim.

Liam Clogger is Williams Head of Communications, a role he has held at the team for almost a decade. A serial motor racing PR man, in his previous incarnation he worked with the late and great Richard Burns and Colin McRae at the Subaru World Rally Team and migrated to F1 in 2001

I had a fan in my hotel room last night (not that kind of fan) and I slept much better than the night before as a result. The room still resembled a sauna, but a constant stream of cool air did wonders.

Hotel breakfast is excellent, but runny low cal marmalade is not my bag. I need a bit of chunky Frank Cooper’s Oxford marmalade to kick start my morning. So I saved myself for our ritual 0900hrs British press breakfast in the team motorhome, a standing tradition at every European race. And our motorhome girls cater for some of our more curious habits, including marmalade fixations. The breakfasts are called the Kevin Garside Memorial Breakfasts, so named after the erstwhile Mr Garside, the former Daily Telegraph F1 correspondent who failed to arrive in the correct location for one of our pre-season car launches some years ago. He didn’t read the instructions, spending more time worrying about which of his flouncy shirts to wear and turned up at our factory, instead of the RAC Club in Pall Mall where we were presenting our car. This was sufficient material for the Brit pack of journalists to roast him, and we have played our part in dedicating our Friday breakfasts in his honour. Every race has its own topical invitation, normally politically incorrect…..

Friday 5pm is time for the driver’s briefing, and as reported elsewhere on this august organ, I had some special “I beat the Stig” tee shirts made for Rubens to celebrate his record Star In A Reasonably Priced Car lap time on Top Gear. A little cheeky, I know, but I also had three more made which had a subtle difference. Rubens presented Mark Webber, Jenson and Lewis with their very own “I didn’t beat the Stig” t-shirts and I carefully choreographed BBC F1 TV, Radio 5 Live and a photographer to be waiting as the drivers emerged from their meeting. To be fair, they were all good sports, Jenson even intimating that Ruben’s quick time was due to him cutting a corner and all three protagonists will definitely be lobbying to get back on the show and have a crack at Ruben’s record.

Kevin Eason from The Times was quick to enquire about his broken lap-top, which he gave me yesterday in the belief that we were still sponsored by HP! I’ve asked our IT guy to look at it and, in the meantime, Kevin is using my spare computer. Glad to be of service; I just hope he doesn’t have a squint through all the notes I keep on the F1 journalists…..

Thereafter, my day had a good pace to it. There were lots of interviews to manage, including some nice radio Q&As with the BFBS (British Forces Broadcasting Service). Quite a few of the boys in the race team are ex-military, so we got some of them to talk about their experiences in the Forces and to describe the parallels we have at AT&T Williams with our methods of working and organising ourselves. As a military kid myself, I was encouraged to break the golden PR rule and step in front of the camera (metaphorically) and give my account of growing up as the son of a fighter pilot based in Germany during my school days. There isn’t much that grabs your attention if you are lucky enough to work in F1, but there is a real cabal of people on the team that love fast jets – they are about the only thing that trumps us for noise and speed. It should be known that I spent my weekend off between Silverstone and Hockenheim at the Fairford Air Show with my daughter, Ciara and son, Finn.

The drivers and engineers seemed happy with progress on-track; the sessions ran smoothly enough, but as a PR man, your work really begins when everything on the track finished. I had two team members in the official afternoon press conference, a bagload of random TV interview requests, a press release to write, photo selections to do and of course this website to keep updated, so it was a long while before I could pull on my running shoes and complete the obligatory lap of the track. Two laps tomorrow, as it is a short circuit, but it was curry on the menu tonight and I wasn’t going to miss that! I managed to flick a quick glance before lights out at a superb sprint win for Cav on stage 19 of the Tour de France. Great stuff and maybe, just maybe he can claim green in Paris on Sunday.

Liam Clogger records Ruben's every word as he is interogated by the media

User Comments: 1 Posts

Stefan Jost

Posted:
27 Jul 2010 at 09:13PM

I find that your well is also working with the guys from BFBS in Intervies together. I miss very BFBS after the Allies in 1994 are deducted from Berlin. I have in the '80s and early '90s years BFBS only heard and have since improved with my English in speech, hearing and language. Thank you for those beautiful years with you British soldiers! (Even the American troops!)
Greeting's from me to all in the team from Berlin/Germany !

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