Williams Blog: Week 18

Posted on Sunday 26 Apr 2009 and tagged with williams, blog, team.

Often the unsung heroes of a Formula One race team, the chefs have an ardous task of continually feeding not only a 70 strong crew, but also the numerous VIP guests that visit the team over a Grand Prix weekend. Hilary Weaver is one of three chefs at AT&T Williams, and has been an integral part of the squad since she joined in 1994. This week, we find out what she's been upto in our latest Williams Blog.

These back-to-back races are pretty intense, particularly when you’re travelling between continents. We left Shanghai on Monday morning and arrived at our hotel, the Elite Suites, in Bahrain at 10pm on Monday night.

The time spent at 37,000 feet was my only break between races because Adam [Dixon], John [Smee] and I had to be at the Bahrain International Circuit all day on Tuesday. Job number one was to find the keys to the hospitality huts in the paddock and then to sort out the sea freight. We have four sets of cooking equipment that we send to each of the flyaway races by sea; it’s delivered to the paddock at every race and we spent Tuesday morning sorting through the 10 boxes of equipment.

The garage set-up crew were also in on Tuesday, so we cooked lunch for 35 before leaving the track at about 1730 because Nico [Rosberg] took the entire race team out to dinner. We went to a place called The Meat Shop and had a great time.

The whole team was in on Wednesday, which meant we were catering for 65 at lunchtime. I make a big effort to ensure everyone gets a balanced diet, so protein and carbohydrates are on offer every day, as well as fresh fruit and salads. In Bahrain we have a very good supplier called Fine Foods; they deliver food to us in the paddock, although we still buy things like milk, cheese and vegetables each day.

Eight guys stayed late on Wednesday night because they were sorting through some parts that arrived late as hand luggage. We left them some chicken salads, before leaving the track at about 6pm. We were pretty on top of things in the kitchen by this point in the week, despite having only one oven and eight gas burners. Thursday was a straightforward day, during which we started to prepare meals for Friday, which is traditionally our busiest day of a race weekend because we have to serve three meals for the entire team. That’s about 200 dishes.

While I’m giving you some stats, let me tell you that the team has drunk more than 3,000 bottles of still water this week. That’s way more than a normal race, due to the extreme heat of Bahrain. The temperature in the pit garage is more than 40 degrees, which makes it pretty tough on the boys. Hence their thirst.

Looking ahead to the rest of the weekend, it looks pretty straightforward. There will be lots of guests for lunch on Sunday, for whom we produce a special ‘guest menu’, and then we’ll fly home on Sunday night. We’ll have our motorhome back at that race, the Spanish Grand Prix. What a luxury!

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