I've been following motor racing since I was about 8, my friend and I pretending to have F1 races around the school playground (no one wanted me to be on their football team!), me driving a McLaren and my friend driving a Lotus. On Wednesday Autocar came through the letter box, and I read the F1 reports before my Dad came home (it was his magazine). Also around that time we got our hands on a Blue Peter Annual which contained an article where they visited the Lotus team in Hethel. I think this was in the days of skirts and gound effect.
Some years ago I bought my Dad a book for Christmas. It was by a mechanic in the Benetton team the year that Senna died, Schumacher won the World Championships and a fire occured in the Benetton pits caused by them fiddling with the fuelling rig. Quite an action packed year. This helped me better understand how an F1 team worked in those days. Fascinating book.
Prepared to go as geeky as you wish.
Me, I've been following motor racing since I was seven. I was hooked by *that* moment at Paddock in the 1982 British Grand Prix.
I used to ride my bicycle around pretending to win the British Grand Prix in a Toleman-Hart.
And I will say that Mansellmania rather passed me by - it's *always* been the Warwick brothers for me.
Well, throw in the fact that from a young girl / teen's perspective, two of those three made far better pin-ups than the other...
I couldn't afford Autosport at the time, so I used to read it in the newsagents every Thursday morning on the way to school. Until I went to senior school, and my pocket money then upped to the giddy heights of £2.50 a week!
I should have that Blue Peter annual somewhere then, as I used to collect them. The ground-effect cars were pretty interesting pieces of engineering, and it's kind of odd to see things come full circle, as they're going back to ground effect technology for next year. That book - "A Mechanic's Tale" is by Stevie Matchett. There is a copy on the bookshelf behind me.
My own connection with the sport. My MEng was sponsored by Reynard Cars, where I was doing research on their then ChampCar programme. I then did a PhD in impact testing and strength of materials, sponsored by McLaren. I've been lucky to work with guys like Mark Preston, Guillaume Roquelin, Brian O'Rourke and the FIA Technical Delegate, Jo Bauer. I then fell into the media side of things quite by accident and did a ten year stint as a journalist and photographer, providing photos and copy for most of the major publications.
These days, I've taken a back seat and merely maintain an archive. It started out as a schoolgirl scrapbook, and sort of... grew.
