Sophie Ogg – Head of Communications, Williams
It’s a tough week, one of the toughest for everyone in the whole of the marketing department and even on the engineering side. We have a lot of fan support, a lot of guests that want to be here, partly because it is our home race. The partners want to do more things here and we have a hospitality suite that holds over a hundred guests. We also need a bigger marketing team to look after all these extra guests. It all adds to the feeling that there’s a lot more going on here.
On the media side, we don't have a British driver, apart from Alex Lynn as a test driver and that eases the pressure a little bit. However, there is still a massive demand for interviews and we have had more requests here than usual, not just for the drivers, but also in terms of TV crews wanting access to the team and its personnel or wanting to film in the motorhome. The fact that we are a British team means they like to include us to have some British element in their coverage for their shows. We have more requests for Claire (Williams) and for general broadcasts against a British backdrop. I’d imagine if we had a British driver, then it would be twenty times more crazy.
It is quite tough and also, because our factory is just down the road from Silverstone, you get a false sense of security and kid yourself that it’s easier, as for one thing you don’t have to get on a plane. But in reality, getting on a plane and going somewhere on a Wednesday or sometimes the Tuesday, is a good marker for starting a race week. Whereas this week, it feels as though everything started on Monday. Then, on the Wednesday, we were in London with Felipe Massa and Rob Smedley on the Chris Evans’ breakfast show on BBC Radio 2. Rob famously gave out his work email and got about a thousand emails in the space of an hour! We also did a big event at Mercedes HPP on Thursday morning before the drivers came to the track. It’s nice to do these additional things, but it’s more than we do at most other races. So you end up feeling you’ve done a lot even though the on-track action hasn’t even started.
We try and bring some factory staff into the paddock, but it’s much harder than it used to be in terms of getting passes. But we do help with providing general tickets for the factory people. We used to get coachloads of staff down when we had testing here at Silverstone.
On balance, I think everybody loves the British Grand Prix, but from a working point of view it can feel like the toughest race on the calendar and when you’ve got through it and survived, there is a sense of achievement and you can look forward to going back to a sense of normality.
