Driver Diaries: October

Posted on Thursday 13 Nov 2008 and tagged with driver-diaries, nico, kazuki.

1st October: Both drivers are on holiday. Nico is in Bali with girlfriend Vivian; Kazuki is at home in Nagoya with his family.

4/5th October: Kazuki’s hectic schedule during the build-up to the Japanese Grand Prix begins with a Toyota event at the Megaweb in Tokyo. More than 140,000 people attend over the two days.

6th October: Kazuki attends an Accenture event in Tokyo, while Nico lands in Japan after flying in from Bali.

7th October: Kazuki attends a Toyota press conference in the morning before heading to an RBS function in the afternoon. The RBS event sees him racing all-comers on a Scalextric set. “All this PR is hard work,” says Kazuki, “but I’m enjoying it and really looking forward to my home race.”

8th October: Kazuki’s still hard at work. He heads to Lenovo’s Japanese HQ in the morning, while in the afternoon he takes part in a Lenovo business partners’ event. It involves him taking part in a 50-minute talk show. In the evening he drives from Tokyo to Gotemba, where he is staying for the Japanese Grand Prix weekend. Nico, meanwhile, takes the AT&T Williams marketing team out to dinner in Gotemba.

10th October: The drivers complete 130 laps of Fuji Speedway during practice. They end the day in seventh (Kazuki) and 13th (Nico) positions. After practice, Nico visits the Gotemba shopping mall to buy a digital camera – photography being his new hobby.

11th October: Both drivers make it through to Q2 in qualifying, with Kazuki lining up 14th on the grid and Nico 15th.

12th October: Kazuki has a disappointing home GP. A first-corner collision with David Coulthard demotes him to the back of the grid and he recovers to 15th place by the end of the race. Nico loses several places at the start, but a cunning one-stop strategy and some assertive overtaking manoeuvres move him up to 11th at the chequered flag.

13th October: Nico flies to Shanghai ahead of the following weekend’s Chinese Grand Prix. Kazuki is back on PR duty for the team in Tokyo.

14th October: Kazuki launches his own limited edition Oris watch.

15th October: Kazuki flies to Shanghai to begin his preparations for the Chinese Grand Prix.

16th October: Nico heads to the 14th century Yuyuan Gardens in central Shanghai with German F1 broadcaster RTL. “It’s nice to see a bit of the city that hasn’t been built in the last 20 years,” says Nico. “It was nice to drink lots of tea in one of the tea houses as well.”

17th October: Practice gets underway in China, with the AT&T Williams drivers completing 113 laps of the Shanghai International Circuit. They end the day in 10th (Nico) and 16th (Kazuki) positions.

18th October: Nico qualifies 15th and Kazuki 17th for the Chinese Grand Prix. Both drivers are struggling with their FW30s through the middle sector of the lap. In the evening they head to an AT&T dinner in the centre of the city.

19th October: After yesterday’s difficult qualifying session, the team puts the drivers on different pitstop strategies. Kazuki makes just one pitstop and comes home in 12th place; Nico makes two stops and finishes 15th after spending much of the race stuck behind slower cars. Both drivers fly out of Shanghai after the race: Nico heads to New York to be with his girlfriend Vivian; Kazuki heads to the UK.

23rd October: Kazuki visits the Williams factory in Grove to use the simulator and to talk through car set-up for the forthcoming Brazilian Grand Prix with his engineers.

26th October: Kazuki flies to Sao Paulo, the scene of his F1 debut last year; Nico makes the journey from the Big Apple.

29th October: Kazuki plays 5-a-side football with his mechanics and scores the winning goal.

30th October: Nico and Kazuki join the other drivers for a photo opportunity in the pitlane with David Coulthard, who is retiring after this race.

31st October: The AT&T Williams drivers end the opening day of practice in eighth (Nico) and 10th (Kazuki) positions. Can they use today’s result as a springboard towards a good result in the season finale?

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