Day 2 - January 2 - To the office

That’s better?!

A nice long sleep in a very comfy bed certainly set me up for my first full day, researching at the Press centre and Scrutineering. Firstly I had to get there and having been told there was a bus leaving on the hour I made my way down to find it sitting there, get wet. It was raining!! At least the bus was on time!

Due to the precipitation issue I decided to do most of my research in the press room, afterall Alessandro had told me that today would be no interest, its mostly the Portuguese riders and drivers and with over 1,000 vehicles registered to go through the checks the process will continue for 3 days with Mitsu tomorrow and VW the day after.

I wanted to get a feel for how it all worked in preparation for when the big guns arrived and so at lunch I wandered down to the Bivoac with 2 producers from Eurosport. They weren’t any old producers however, these guys make WATTS! Now if you have Eurosport you will have watched WATTS, its hilarious and these guys were the creative force behind it, respect!

Over lunch of beans and lumps of fatty pork we had a chance to chat about their creation. My struggle with language is only made easier when there are multi-nationalities. At lunch it was an Englishman, a German, an Italian and a Frenchwoman which meant we choose English to communicate.

Post lunch was used to explore, Bolwers everywhere which was good to see, and I also ventured into the spectator area which was impressive, but empty. I guess everyone is saving themselves for tomorrow. Back in the Press room, which was empty I sat and ate, and drunk and got very frustrated by the flashing lights, no-one else was bothered though, maybe its how electricity works in Portugal.

The press room slowly filled to quite a frenzy in the evening which held me people watching for a while but finally I decided to drag myself away to the hotel. Again I had to wait for the bus which, this time never came, I waited about an hour until I spotted 2 cameramen who I thought worked for ASO so asked to hitch a lift. Olo and Patrick worked on RTL7, Dutch TV and being from Holland they were crazy and spoke great English, the trip home was good fun.

After a failed attempt to find food in town I retired back to the Bar for a steak sandwich and a re-union with an old friend, ‘Bock beer’. I was joined by an Independent Canadian film maker, Olo and Patrick. It was nice to hear the English language used in a passionate way again. Foreigners don’t have the ability to portray emotion when they speak English and Miss Canada was certainly passionate about her project... It was a nice way to finish the evening, recalling Blues Brothers and Monty Python lines to each other!!