Williams Blog: Week 37

Posted on Tuesday 13 Oct 2009 and tagged with blog, team.

Account Manager, Richard Lavers, takes over the blog this week. Responsible for the relationships between the team and various sponsors, Richard has had a busy couple of weeks looking after our partners in Singapore and Japan. Here he tells us all about it...

It’s the Wednesday after the Japanese Grand Prix and I’m writing this blog at 37,000 feet, while en route home from Suzuka. I’ve been in Tokyo since Sunday’s race, overseeing partner events with AT&T and Accenture, and I’ve got only a handful of days at home before heading to Sao Paulo on Monday for the Brazilian Grand Prix.

It’s been a hectic couple of weeks in the Far East. AT&T Williams had a lot of guests at the Singapore Grand Prix and Suzuka was Kazuki Nakajima’s home race, so there was a lot going on there as well. I kept Kazuki busy from the moment he arrived in Japan on the Monday before the race, but he took it in good humour – as ever.

First up was an RBS partner event at the Tyler Foundation last Tuesday. The Foundation was set up to care for children with cancer and Kazuki visited its ‘Shine On!’ House, where he spent ages talking to the children and making cars with them. He was very good and, like the rest of us present, I think he was bowled over by the courage of these kids.

We then visited RBS’s offices in the centre of Tokyo, before I accompanied Kazuki to a cocktail party in the evening, where some AT&T Williams memorabilia was auctioned in aid of the Tyler Foundation. It made more than £10,000, which was really fantastic.

On Wednesday of last week, Kazuki and I travelled to Suzuka. We caught the Shinkansen (bullet train) from Tokyo to Nagoya, before taking a slower train – something us Brits are more used to! – from Nagoya to Shiroko. Kazuki then travelled to the Suzuka Circuit hotel by car and I caught a taxi to my hotel in Yokkaichi, where the other members of the AT&T Williams marketing team were staying. The trip took pretty much all day and there was just time for a beer before heading to bed.

I was the team’s only account manager in Japan, so Thursday was what I call ‘base camp day’. I checked everything was in order in the Paddock Club suite; I sorted the passes and I answered emails, of which there were hundreds because my Blackberry wasn’t working in Japan.

The business days of the Grand Prix – Friday, Saturday and Sunday – went smoothly. I worked Kazuki hard when he wasn’t in the car because there was a lot of local interest in him. He seemed to be much more famous this year, than when he made his Japanese Grand Prix debut last year.

Sunday was my busiest day because we had 40 guests in the Paddock Club and 35 in a grandstand. It was quite a logistical challenge, but there were surprisingly few hitches given the language barrier in Japan. I’m pleased with how everything went, so now to Brazil!