Starting from the Back of the Grid: Misadventures Inside Formula One's Flying Circus - Hardcover

Henley, Kris; Henley, Ian

 
9781801506472: Starting from the Back of the Grid: Misadventures Inside Formula One's Flying Circus
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 1801506477 ISBN 13: 9781801506472
Verlag: Pitch Publishing Ltd, 2024

Inhaltsangabe

The hilarious and endearing story of how an academic flop with a prodigious talent for getting into embarrassing situations somehow succeeds in the glamorous world of Formula One.

The author, a TV producer and occasional cameraman, gives a distinctive perspective on F1’s Flying Circus, up close and personal with motorsport legends, A-list celebrities and the super-rich. He tells of his encounters with its greatest drivers and most intriguing behind-the-scenes personalities, and recalls the sport’s rivalries, tragedies and scandals.

He charts his own comedic career path from rough sleeper on a rubbish tip in Hong Kong to the paddock in Monte Carlo where his first words to Michael Schumacher caused the racing legend to inflate with rage. But a few traumatic days later he is sipping champagne high above the track on race day.

If you love Formula One and have a sense of humor, you will want to read this book.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Kris has worked as a freelance TV producer since 1993 for Star TV, the Golf Channel, BSkyB, Disney ESPN and Fox Sports covering Formula One, Formula E, other motorsports, boxing, American football and golf. He lives in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Ian worked in sales and marketing for technology companies and founded a management consultancy. He lives in north London.

Guenther Steiner is the Haas F1 Team Principal. He lives in Mooresville, North Carolina.

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Latin America, We Have a Problem!
Abu Dhabi 2021, Race Day

FIVE MINUTES and 18 seconds before we started broadcasting
the last Grand Prix of the thrilling 2021 season to Spanish-speaking
America, I knew a disaster was imminent.
     The enthralling Formula One season had reached a thrilling
climax. The eyes of tens of millions of fans were locked on two
drivers: the up-and-coming pretender, supremely talented and
intensely ambitious Dutchman Max Verstappen, in hot pursuit
of his maiden Formula One World Championship; and the all-
business, undisputed master of his craft, British superstar Sir Lewis
Carl Davidson Hamilton, MBE and Honorary Fellow of the Royal
Academy of Engineering. Having won every other conceivable
honour in the sport, Lewis Hamilton was striving to surpass racing
legend Michael Schumacher by winning his eighth Formula One
drivers’ title.
     Astonishingly, the fierce rivals were tied on 369 5 points after
21 closely fought races throughout a contentious season. Tens of
millions of seasoned Formula One fans and newcomers alike were
restlessly anticipating the finale of a sporting epic that would be
talked about for decades.
     Our onsite production crew, charged with bringing this mouth-
watering action to Latin America, however, scarcely seemed to
match the importance of the occasion. Covid-19 had reduced our
numbers to just two. Our dynamic duo consisted of the youthful-
looking, 57-year-old, blond-haired, ruggedly handsome Argentinian
Juan Fossaroli, a superstar in his own right as presenter, principal
interviewer, commentator and pit reporter for millions of Latin
American motorsport fans and, as a partner of the production
company attached to Fox Sports, my boss. And then there was me.
A less-eye-catching, somewhat balding 54-year-old from Jersey
with, as we shall see, some serious challenges in presenting the same
aura of suave sophistication. Oh, and that’s Jersey, the tiny island just
off the coast of France, by the way. Which is nothing like the place
where Tony Soprano built his various dubious businesses.
     The job title on my F1 season pass boasts ‘producer’ which
certainly sounds good, suggesting an authoritative figure
strutting around in mirror shades, dishing out orders to cowering
subordinates. The reality is not always so impressive. My duties
do include interviewing the racing drivers, team principals,
engineers, mechanics and other F1 team members (as well
as passing celebrities); and I edit features for the motorsports
programmes which air across Latin America. But I can also be
seen performing more mundane tasks, such as clearing the way
for our regular cameraman, the affable Ulises Panizza (Uli to his
many friends), as he tracks backwards during a walking interview;
sprinting up the paddock searching frantically for a new battery;
fetching Juan’s jacket from the press room, or an umbrella from
my locker to protect the camera when it rains; or begging another
TV crew to lend us a forgotten cable; and then returning a few
moments later to beg the same crew for the microphone that goes
with the cable. In short, I get to do the jobs that Juan, the star of
the show, is too busy to do.
     It is also my pleasure to grovel to the FIA for not filling in the
appropriate paperwork for a parking pass and then to be haughtily
reprimanded because they have nothing to do with such mundane
matters and say that I should instead apply to FOM. And, by the
way, I really should know the difference by now. Cue: more grovelling
Indeed, whatever job needs doing, however much kowtowing
is required, I do what has to be done to bring the action to our
audience. And right now, what had to be done was to stand in for
Uli, whose Chinese CanSino Covid-19 vaccine had been insufficient
to satisfy officialdom that he was safe to travel to the Middle East.
Which left us short-handed So heroically, if somewhat diffidently,
I accepted the mission to save the day.
     Under my sole supervision was the hi-tech Sony PMW-300
XDCAM camera that would provide millions of Latin American
F1 fans with an intimate, insider’s perspective, up close and personal
with the superstars of this elite sport. Our viewers would experience
the febrile atmosphere in the paddock, hear the roar of the engines
on the chaotically coordinated grid, snatch glimpses of, and maybe
even a sound bite from, their heroes as they strode purposefully to
their cars. And they would hear the latest fevered speculation and
sensational developments from Juan, their beloved correspondent.
The ever-so-tiny flaw in this plan was that handling a production
grade camera is skilled work and I was, more or less, a novice. There
are many features on a modern video camera, but the only ones I
had really mastered were the on/off switch, the focus, the zoom,
the iris (sort of) and the record button. Which is not necessarily to
say I always pressed it at the right time.
     So, just two guys with a big responsibility, working on a
shoestring. There were no back-ups, no additional support staff and
no spares. The all-important camera was perched on top of its tripod
to take a final shot of FOM’s promotional poster ‘Lewis vs Max
– Winner Takes All’, which was affixed to the wall between the
back entrances of the Mercedes and Red Bull garages. The drivers
appeared to be staring one another down like prize fighters and I
thought I could use the image in the following week’s highlights.
magazine, dramatically zooming out to reveal the protagonists in a
montage of victorious, celebratory, reflective and pensive poses. And
to be honest, I was feeling quite smug about how good my seventh
attempt at the Tarantino-inspired reverse crash-zoom shot looked.
     The feed was already streaming from the LiveU video
transmission pack on my back to our studios in Buenos Aires and
Mexico City for recording and broadcast. I would not touch the
record button again until the race was over. The studio-based
producers were no doubt wondering why they were seeing repeated
crash-zooms of a poster instead of our presenter, Juan. It was past
time to get going.
     My job for the half-hour pre-show, the race itself and the hour-
long post-show was simple. I just had to point and focus the camera
either on Juan, or on the drivers, as they rushed through the paddock
to their garages, climbed over their halos, pulled in their elbows
and slithered into their specially moulded carbon fibre seats in their
cockpits, before turning right out of their garages and roaring off
down the pit lane on to the anti-clockwise circuit.
     Or perhaps I would shoot nervous-looking team principals,
suavely unruffled former world champions, excited celebrities, or
one of the many other voracious attention-seekers, of which there
is a plentiful supply at this sort of sporting spectacular. Some
interviews I had arranged weeks before. Others would be done as
the opportunity presented.
     I might pan from Juan to the #44 Mercedes in the pits and
then zoom in slowly on to Lewis’s helmet as Juan pointed out an
intriguing design detail. Or maybe I would follow Max with a
dramatic whip pan (if perhaps not perfectly in frame) as he emerged
from the garage in his #33 Red Bull and...

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Verlag
Pitch Publishing Ltd
Erscheinungsdatum
2024
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1801506477
ISBN 13 
9781801506472
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
320
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Verantwortliche Person
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