Ben Hunt – Journalist, The Sun
The British Grand Prix is the highlight of my year. We always seem to go head to head with Wimbledon and that gets top billing, because it’s a two week event and it’s in London, which makes a difference. We have a busy two week run up to Silverstone, with the Goodwood Festival of Speed and this year, the Formula E final as well. There’s no time off and I look at it as a British Motorsport Fortnight. My first event for this race was a couple of weeks ago when I went karting with Damon Hill as part of his charity work with the Halow Project. That was my first piece relating to the Grand Prix and it just keeps going from there. You might start off with a page and then that builds into a spread (two pages) depending on the news agenda.
The newspapers are always looking for exclusives, but they are getting rarer and rarer as drivers do less and less media work. So you have to find ways to get your own story. The volume of work is not a problem, but getting something the other papers don’t have is the hardest part.
For a normal Grand Prix, the paper would start taking copy on Monday or Tuesday whereas for Silverstone it has been a solid two weeks and I’ve been filing stories every day since the Austrian GP. We have a busy web site too and there is a steady flow of traffic there from the people back in the office. The pieces will also be different this weekend: whereas usually, it would be a story with a photo, this weekend the work might be more intricate with details about a car for example involving graphics and guide to the circuit, which all involves a lot more work.
It’s very important to have a British angle, it’s massive. If Lewis Hamilton wins then of course he’ll be on the front page. We love to see the Brits doing well and we always champion their cause. We get behind the British drivers and their success helps: if Lewis wasn’t there, it would be a different story. Formula 1 is very popular but it helps if a British driver is doing well. The question is, where’s the next one when Lewis’ time is up?
