Williams Blog: Week 29

Posted on Monday 13 Jul 2009 and tagged with team, blog.

Matt Jones is the team's Head of Marketing Services so is responsible for our relationships with our partners. Overseeing a team of four account managers, the graphics department, hospitality and the conference centre, he's a busy man but he managed to find some time to write this week's blog... 

No two weeks are the same in my job. I’m either meeting clients, attending a Grand Prix or in the office managing the AT&T Williams client services department and the RBS Williams F1 Conference Centre.

Ahead of last weekend’s German Grand Prix, there was a lot of preparation work to be done because it was Nico’s home race. He had a lot of media commitments, so my first job on Monday was to finalise the schedules of the marketing department and the drivers. A race weekend runs to a very tight schedule, so everyone needs to know exactly what they’re doing, and when.

Typically, Tuesday is my day of meetings at the factory and that was the case last week. In the morning I caught up with Dom Reilly, Head of Acquisitions, and Liam Clogger, Head of Communications, to discuss ours plans for the next couple of months. I then had a conference call with RBS to discuss their sponsorship activation plans for the rest of the year, which included a sponsors’ day that we are staging at Silverstone on 2nd September.

Due to the lack of in-season testing this year, we’re laying on this event at Silverstone to give our partners the opportunity to see cars running in anger away from a Grand Prix weekend. The regulations won’t permit us to run this year’s car, so we’re planning to use a mouth-watering selection of cars from the Williams F1 museum. It should be a fantastic day.

I flew to the Nurburgring on Thursday morning. It was a ridiculously early start, 0400hrs, in order to catch an 0715 flight from Heathrow to Dusseldorf, and I then had a 1.5-hour drive to the racetrack. Thursday afternoon was a normal pre-event day: I picked up our allocation of paddock passes, checked out the changes to the track’s infrastructure (there was a new merchandise area) and ran through the last minute changes to the schedule. We then had a departmental dinner at a steakhouse near to the racetrack.

Friday was my quietest day of the week really. We had just 25 guests in attendance, including a selection of people from BFBS (British Forces Broadcasting Services), who were fascinated by the operational side of the team. I gave them a garage tour, so that they could see the many parallels between the race team and the military – I’m ex-army, so I know these things!

On Friday evening we had a partner event in the motorhome. Philips and Randstad have been running a photographic competition for the past five races and this was the moment when they announced the winner. With three thousand euros going to the winner, there were a lot of anxious photographers milling about, let me tell you.

The rest of the weekend worked like clockwork, including Nico’s drive to fourth place on Sunday. A good result like that lifts everyone, including the guests, and I think everyone left the track feeling very happy. The only disappointment was the weather. It was wet and cold throughout (a raging 14 degrees in mid-July…), so we’re all hoping for some sun in Hungary, scene of the next race.