AT&T Williams F1

Istanbul is a great place to have a Grand Prix. It’s a beautiful city, with lots of history, and for that reason I like to stay on the European side of the Bosphorus because that’s the oldest part of the city.

Since arriving here on Wednesday evening, I’ve tried to take a look around, look at some of the architecture and watch some of the ships in the Bosphorus, which I’m told is the busiest waterway in the world.



Of course, the biggest problem with staying on the ‘wrong’ side of the Bosphorus is that you have to cross it to get to and from the track. There are only two bridges, so the traffic is awful and last year it took some people in the team two hours to get back from the track! For this year – and this is one of the great perks of being a Formula One driver – I have a police escort!


I follow a police motorbike up the hard shoulder to the tollbooths, and where there’s no hard shoulder we weave through the traffic. It cuts the journey time in half and now everyone at AT&T Williams wants to know what time we’re leaving the hotel so that they can follow us.

Would it be funny to tell them the wrong time tomorrow morning?