Utdrag. ©Omtryckt med tillstånd Alla rättigheter förbehållna
Latin America, We Have a Problem!
Abu Dhabi 2021, Race Day
FIVE MINUTES and 18 seconds before we started broadcasting
the last Grand Prix of the thrilling 2021 season to Spanish-speaking
America, I knew a disaster was imminent.
The enthralling Formula One season had reached a thrilling
climax. The eyes of tens of millions of fans were locked on two
drivers: the up-and-coming pretender, supremely talented and
intensely ambitious Dutchman Max Verstappen, in hot pursuit
of his maiden Formula One World Championship; and the all-
business, undisputed master of his craft, British superstar Sir Lewis
Carl Davidson Hamilton, MBE and Honorary Fellow of the Royal
Academy of Engineering. Having won every other conceivable
honour in the sport, Lewis Hamilton was striving to surpass racing
legend Michael Schumacher by winning his eighth Formula One
drivers’ title.
Astonishingly, the fierce rivals were tied on 369 5 points after
21 closely fought races throughout a contentious season. Tens of
millions of seasoned Formula One fans and newcomers alike were
restlessly anticipating the finale of a sporting epic that would be
talked about for decades.
Our onsite production crew, charged with bringing this mouth-
watering action to Latin America, however, scarcely seemed to
match the importance of the occasion. Covid-19 had reduced our
numbers to just two. Our dynamic duo consisted of the youthful-
looking, 57-year-old, blond-haired, ruggedly handsome Argentinian
Juan Fossaroli, a superstar in his own right as presenter, principal
interviewer, commentator and pit reporter for millions of Latin
American motorsport fans and, as a partner of the production
company attached to Fox Sports, my boss. And then there was me.
A less-eye-catching, somewhat balding 54-year-old from Jersey
with, as we shall see, some serious challenges in presenting the same
aura of suave sophistication. Oh, and that’s Jersey, the tiny island just
off the coast of France, by the way. Which is nothing like the place
where Tony Soprano built his various dubious businesses.
The job title on my F1 season pass boasts ‘producer’ which
certainly sounds good, suggesting an authoritative figure
strutting around in mirror shades, dishing out orders to cowering
subordinates. The reality is not always so impressive. My duties
do include interviewing the racing drivers, team principals,
engineers, mechanics and other F1 team members (as well
as passing celebrities); and I edit features for the motorsports
programmes which air across Latin America. But I can also be
seen performing more mundane tasks, such as clearing the way
for our regular cameraman, the affable Ulises Panizza (Uli to his
many friends), as he tracks backwards during a walking interview;
sprinting up the paddock searching frantically for a new battery;
fetching Juan’s jacket from the press room, or an umbrella from
my locker to protect the camera when it rains; or begging another
TV crew to lend us a forgotten cable; and then returning a few
moments later to beg the same crew for the microphone that goes
with the cable. In short, I get to do the jobs that Juan, the star of
the show, is too busy to do.
It is also my pleasure to grovel to the FIA for not filling in the
appropriate paperwork for a parking pass and then to be haughtily
reprimanded because they have nothing to do with such mundane
matters and say that I should instead apply to FOM. And, by the
way, I really should know the difference by now. Cue: more grovelling
Indeed, whatever job needs doing, however much kowtowing
is required, I do what has to be done to bring the action to our
audience. And right now, what had to be done was to stand in for
Uli, whose Chinese CanSino Covid-19 vaccine had been insufficient
to satisfy officialdom that he was safe to travel to the Middle East.
Which left us short-handed So heroically, if somewhat diffidently,
I accepted the mission to save the day.
Under my sole supervision was the hi-tech Sony PMW-300
XDCAM camera that would provide millions of Latin American
F1 fans with an intimate, insider’s perspective, up close and personal
with the superstars of this elite sport. Our viewers would experience
the febrile atmosphere in the paddock, hear the roar of the engines
on the chaotically coordinated grid, snatch glimpses of, and maybe
even a sound bite from, their heroes as they strode purposefully to
their cars. And they would hear the latest fevered speculation and
sensational developments from Juan, their beloved correspondent.
The ever-so-tiny flaw in this plan was that handling a production
grade camera is skilled work and I was, more or less, a novice. There
are many features on a modern video camera, but the only ones I
had really mastered were the on/off switch, the focus, the zoom,
the iris (sort of) and the record button. Which is not necessarily to
say I always pressed it at the right time.
So, just two guys with a big responsibility, working on a
shoestring. There were no back-ups, no additional support staff and
no spares. The all-important camera was perched on top of its tripod
to take a final shot of FOM’s promotional poster ‘Lewis vs Max
– Winner Takes All’, which was affixed to the wall between the
back entrances of the Mercedes and Red Bull garages. The drivers
appeared to be staring one another down like prize fighters and I
thought I could use the image in the following week’s highlights.
magazine, dramatically zooming out to reveal the protagonists in a
montage of victorious, celebratory, reflective and pensive poses. And
to be honest, I was feeling quite smug about how good my seventh
attempt at the Tarantino-inspired reverse crash-zoom shot looked.
The feed was already streaming from the LiveU video
transmission pack on my back to our studios in Buenos Aires and
Mexico City for recording and broadcast. I would not touch the
record button again until the race was over. The studio-based
producers were no doubt wondering why they were seeing repeated
crash-zooms of a poster instead of our presenter, Juan. It was past
time to get going.
My job for the half-hour pre-show, the race itself and the hour-
long post-show was simple. I just had to point and focus the camera
either on Juan, or on the drivers, as they rushed through the paddock
to their garages, climbed over their halos, pulled in their elbows
and slithered into their specially moulded carbon fibre seats in their
cockpits, before turning right out of their garages and roaring off
down the pit lane on to the anti-clockwise circuit.
Or perhaps I would shoot nervous-looking team principals,
suavely unruffled former world champions, excited celebrities, or
one of the many other voracious attention-seekers, of which there
is a plentiful supply at this sort of sporting spectacular. Some
interviews I had arranged weeks before. Others would be done as
the opportunity presented.
I might pan from Juan to the #44 Mercedes in the pits and
then zoom in slowly on to Lewis’s helmet as Juan pointed out an
intriguing design detail. Or maybe I would follow Max with a
dramatic whip pan (if perhaps not perfectly in frame) as he emerged
from the garage in his #33 Red Bull and cruised on to the circuit
to perform final checks before taking pole position, the rest of the
field slotting neatly into place behind.
Or after crossing over from the pits to the grid, I might capture
the moment they pushed Lando Norris in his McLaren-Mercedes
into third place and film him climbing out of his car; and then walk
inelegantly backwards (‘moonwalking’ as Uli likes to call it) to keep
Lando in frame as he made his way to the front of the grid for the
national anthem. Doubtless I would stumble over a wheel gun or
tyre cover in the absence of anyone to clear my way, but I might
create a compelling, if shaky, travelling shot of the British driver.
My job was just to follow whatever action Juan chose to highlight
while he confided the latest buzz to our viewers or bantered with
the hosts in our studios in Buenos Aires and Mexico City.
I checked the time on my wristwatch again. 16:24:40. The
second hand was racing around the clock face and I was running
out of time. The heavy, cumbersome tripod would not be required
again until the post-race interviews, so I planned to switch the
camera to a lightweight monopod that I could fasten to my belt clip.
So, all I had to do was lift the camera and tripod and carry the
vital but fragile equipment ten metres up the paddock to the meeting
point with Juan and make the swap. Five minutes and 18 seconds
before we went on air, I began to lift.
Perhaps it was a subtle shift in the weight above me, or the slight
sound of metal sliding against metal. But whatever it was, I knew
for sure that there was nothing I could do to prevent a catastrophe.
I optimistically hope this book will be of interest to relative newcomers to Formula
One as well as seasoned fans, so I will explain F1 terminology in footnotes as we go
1 Team principals are the F1 team bosses
2 The paddock is the area that the drivers walk through as they make their way from
the teams’ hospitality suites to their garages and is where the press do most of the
driver interviews
3 Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile, the governing body for world motorsport
Latin america, We have a ProBLem!
Formula One Management, the operating company that controls the broadcasting,
organisation and promotional rights of Formula One
5 The horseshoe-shaped titanium tube above the driver’s head that provides crash
protection
6 The front of the starting grid
