iWitness in Hungary: Friday

Posted on Saturday 30 Jul 2011 and tagged with iwitness.

There were dramas for the AT&T Williams marketing team last night. Their Mazda hire car wouldn’t start, so they were forced to hitch a lift back into town with Mercedes GP. Team manager Dickie Stanford organised a new hire car and Richard Lavers was left trying to blag a new car pass from the FIA when they arrived at the track this morning. Easier said than done…

Your eyes didn’t deceive you: that was a picture of Claire Williams being carried around by her father, Frank, this afternoon. Claire is the star interview in the current edition of “Ignition”, the AT&T Williams race preview magazine, and Frank was clearly proud of what she had to say. Was it the bit when she says, “Being honest with the media is really important”?

It was party central at Ferrari this evening. Fernando Alonso turned 30 today and two of the team’s IT technicians joined him in celebrating their birthdays as well. The team organised a birthday party for all three men, at which Fernando’s popstar wife Raquel sang Happy Birthday.

When it comes to busy weekends, Bruno Senna’s manager Chris Goodwin takes some beating. He was qualifying McLaren’s GT3 sportscar at Spa-Francorchamps until midnight last night; he then flew to Budapest this morning to watch Bruno drive the Lotus Renault during FP1, before flying back to Spa this evening to take the start of the Spa 24 Hours tomorrow. “Yes, I feel knackered today,” he said, “but I’ll be fine.”