Williams Blog: Week 30

Posted on Monday 27 Jul 2009 and tagged with williams, team, blog.

Martin Betts writes our team blog for us this week. As a truckie for the team, Martin's has a busy few months. Read all about his week ahead of Hungary...

I’ve worked at AT&T Williams for 11 years, but my job has changed during that time. About five years ago an EU directive stopped Formula One truckies physically driving the trucks due to the long hours, so I’m now a “garage operative.” That makes me a truckie, but without the truck driving because we have relief drivers to do that.

I used to really enjoy driving to races because it was time out. As long as the trucks arrived at a given racetrack by Tuesday lunchtime, it didn’t matter what route we took and we could pace ourselves. I enjoyed that freedom. This year, however, the only race I’ve driven to is Silverstone, which is just up the road from the factory.

Prior to each race, I’m now a member of the advance party that flies out earlier than the rest of the race team. Before Hungary, for example, I flew to Budapest on Tuesday morning in order to be at the Hungaroring by lunchtime. We spent the rest of the day setting up, which meant getting the trucks into position in the paddock and building the pit garage. The last thing we did was unload the cars and the tool boxes.

We finished the setting up process on Wednesday, which meant building the pitwall gantry, marking out the pitstop boxes and ensuring that everything was ready to go when the rest of the team arrived at the track on Thursday morning. For the remainder of the weekend, I worked with the team to provide help where it was needed. That meant tyres, helping to prepare the cars, ensuring the generators were working properly and even refuelling Nico’s car during the practice sessions.

During the weekend we did a lot of pitstop practice, during which I’m always the front jack man. Some people ask if it’s scary to have a Formula One car approaching you at 80kph, but it’s not. Nico and Kazuki are excellent: 99 times out of 100 they hit the mark to within an inch. Then, as soon as the car is stationary, I jack it up and then drop it down again when the front wheels have been changed.

After the race I helped to pack up the garage, which meant dismantling everything we’d built on Tuesday and Wednesday. We did all that on Sunday night, before flying home on Monday morning to begin a two-week holiday. This enforced lay-off, which has been agreed by all of the F1 teams this year, is the first time in my motor racing career that I’ve had such a long break; I cannot wait!