Grand Prix Rejects

This post made me think, how closely are you connected to F1?

Jordan192 wrote:From the dubious (a friend of a friend, who in turn has a lot of friends at Brawn) sources I heard, the amount Ross was asking for naming rights was so batshit insane (over £500 million) that he really didn't want to let it go.

I have a mate at work who knows someone at McLaren and my other half went to school with someone who works at Mercedes engine division in Brixworth. We also have a family friend who was at Cosworth, but worked on indycar engines. Not sure if he's still there.

PS edit - just thought of this one, a former colleague of mine is best mates with ex Jag F1 boss Martin Whittaker who now runs the Bahrain circuit.

My chemistry teacher's best mate was one of the guys who started up Cosworth, and my Uncle worked for Qinetiq when they sponsored Williams and helped with their wind tunnel.

A guy who I went to school with and who lived in my village, his dad was team manager (or something similar) at Williams. Confusingly, his surname was Williams. This was in the 80s, I think.

Oh, and another guy who lives in my village invented something crucial to F1. I only wish I could remember what it was. I shall have to ask my parents.

I used to work with a guy who attended Singapore 2008 and Spa 2009, and coincidently we had a daily delivery from DHL, which sponsored Jordan F1 back in the day...

Jordan wrote:I used to work with a guy who attended Singapore 2008 and Spa 2009

Not Nelson Piquet Jr then...

When I worked at Milton Keynes HMV in 1997, I sold Paul Stewart a flight case for his CDs.

My mother worked with a former (was at that time) wife of Finnish F1 journalist Erkki Mustakari.

I, once, working as concultant at Telecom (Argentinean division), saw that they were exposing the M198 Minardi of Esteban Tuero, and I touched a bit before a security guard came to say the obvious.

For the rest, I'm light years away.

My brother was talking for ages at a dinner to a guy who worked for Red Bull as an engineer (last year he said KERS was a waste of time and money).

I'm American... so no.

I have been to 2 Grand Prix (British in 1989 and Belgium '95) and a company my sister worked for sponsered Paul Stewart Racing in F3

The guy in my village created the F1 crash tests. He has two quite terrifying-looking hunting dogs, which like to roam the place putting the wind up us non-doggy people.

I once got a ride in a Mini Cooper S Stunt Car with Allan McNish...
Thats all I got for this one.

My uncle met Jenson Button once. Otherwise...

thehemogoblin wrote:I'm American... so no.

One of my dad's co-workers used to be married to NASCAR driver Ted Musgrave's sister. Musgrave raced against F1 reject Danny Sullivan in the 1994 Brickyard 400. Also in that race was Lake Speed, who beat the pants off of Ayrton Senna to win a kart championship...

Okay, that doesn't count really... =X

I got to drive around the Phoenix Grand Prix Circuit!!
(Although thousands of people do every day so, I guess that doesn't count)

My wifes best friend is the sister of Mark Preston.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_preston

So I not only have connections to F1, I have connections to an F1 Reject Team and was at their 2007 pre-season party here in Australia and met Taku.

I went to high school with Christian Fittipaldi and attended some classes with him. He was a dork and, of course, an overrated driver.

Apart from the various contacts and fleeting opportunities that we have had as a result of running F1 Rejects, I actually have one tangential F1 contact completely unrelated to this site, despite being on the wrong side of the world. My in-laws are family friends with a guy who currently works in the Red Bull aero department.

On a different note, and off-topic, one of my former bosses at work was David Greenhalgh, one of Australia's foremost motor racing historians. Although that's more about being close to Australian motorsport than to F1 itself.

I should let Kuwashima speak for himself, but Ryan Briscoe was a year below him at school and they used to talk F1 together ...

One of the Twitter friends with whom I have most conversation with was an intern in Force India's R&D department last academic year. Another of my Twitter friends has a husband who works in Brawn's IT department.

Off-line, the only links I can claim are the various F1 personalities I've received an autograph from at Autosport, which probably doesn't count for the purposes of this thread.

I sent an e-mail to USF1 enquiring after career opportunities and they replied asking my to send my resume ...

Captain Hammer wrote:I sent an e-mail to USF1 enquiring after career opportunities and they replied asking my to send my resume ...

Heck... I should do that, just on a lark. It'd be awesome if I ended up as an intern doing PR, and it would fit what I'm going to school for.

Captain Hammer wrote:I sent an e-mail to USF1 enquiring after career opportunities and they replied asking my to send my resume ...

Damn you! I got rejected by Honda, Force India and (most rudely of all) by Williams!

My pal Johannah was a childhood playmate of Juan Pablo Montoya, they grew up together in Bogota.

Non-F1, but I almost bought a sofa-bed that the late Gonzalo Rodrigues used to sleep on while lodging in England. To my annoyance, I couldn't fit it up my stairs, so I had to give it back. Also, I live in the next village down from the one where Dan Wheldon grew up.

I've met Enzo Ferrari.

My nephew works in the chassis design team at Renault.

An engineer who used to work for me is now head of electronic systems at McClaren.

My uncle used to be Jackie Stewart's partner at clay pidgeon shooting.

Oh, and I overtook Jenson Button once, while he was driving a Lamborghini. Mind you it was in Putney High Street at 5 mph.

Ross Prawn wrote:I've met Enzo Ferrari.

That's pretty impressive - when/how?

I forgot my best one. I went to Monaco with my wife a few years ago (2002-ish), not on raceday, just an ordinary week day to look around. We decided to walk the track. I was just stepping out into the road to cross over at La Rascasse, when this enormous black people carrier zoomed up out of nowhere and nearly ran me over. I peered in through the tinted windows to give the driver a glare, only to find myself gazing at Gerhard Berger.

My wife was in a queue in the Holiday Inn in Milton Keynes. There was a woman at the desk taking ages. My wife and an athletic-looking gentleman with a Red Bull bag were rolling their eyes at each other about the dithery woman. When she got home, she looked up who the man might have been, and found it was Robert Doornbos.

thehemogoblin wrote:Heck... I should do that, just on a lark. It'd be awesome if I ended up as an intern doing PR, and it would fit what I'm going to school for.

A lot of my experience is in marketing and public relations. I ran a massive marketing campaign for a student body that was starting up in my first year; by the end of the year, it was the single largest student body dedicated to a subject area. And I did a stint with a regional newspaper where I ended up doing an informal interview with the state premier and film producer Ken Burns after just one week on the job. And then there was my franchise at the start of the year, where I had the smallest of six hundred stores all over the world and by the end of the business's life - it was a seasonal thing - I was inside the top twenty percent worldwide and the top five percent countrywide.

Many Blue Flags wrote:Damn you! I got rejected by Honda, Force India and (most rudely of all) by Williams!

Hey, I sent out requests for information from every team except Ferrari (because they don't accept them), and I only heard back from Force India at the time.

One of my moms co-workers went to an F1 race, 2006 Monaco I believe...

I sold raffle tickets at the 2003 British GP on behalf of the BRDC and got in for free.

(I think this thread has just turned into boasting now, at least for me)

I was born and currently living in the same city where Mika Häkkinen was born. Even then, I'm living on the eastern side while he's originally from the western side of the city...

So nothing much here!

I attended the 1996 British GP, I saw Nelson Piquet Jnr score A1 GP Team Brazil's only victories to date, I've seen Alex Yoong and Sebastian Bourdais race at Brands Hatch in Champ Car in about 2003 (Bourdais's 1st win in the series I believe) and I've seen other ex- and future F1 drivers in various formulae at Brands including in the WTCC, A1 GP and FRenault.

I went to the 2007 British GP.

Went to friday practice at the 2003 British GP...where I was amazed at how rough that years Cosworth sounded in the back of the Jordans and Minardis.

Also went to see a 2000 Ferrari that was on display near where I lived.

And my uncle, a mildly successful bike racer, was friends with Colin Mcrae (who I assume knew people in F1, there's a link! Honest! I'm not just boasting :p) and even managed to roll over one of his rally cars when given a go in one

noisebox wrote:

Ross Prawn wrote:I've met Enzo Ferrari.

That's pretty impressive - when/how?

Went on a tour around the Ferrari factory in about 1981. (It was the weekend of the Imola GP when Gilles and Pironi fell out. Gilles last GP.) The tour was pretty impressive, particularly the paint shop where they did 308's and FIAT tractor cabs on the same production line. And at the end they took us in to see the great man. He looked much as you would expect, impressive, dark glasses. He mumbled few words in best Marlon Brando style and we were ushered out again. Then we had a drive around the test circuit in a bus. After the GP went to a dinner where I was on the same table as Harvey Postlethwaite. The drivers should have been their, but they had had a bad day.

Um, not very. My best mate lives very close to the McLaren base in Woking.

Oh, and when I was a teenager one of my neighbours worked in a factory that made parts for F1 cars for some of the British teams - every so often he'd come back with a bit of metal that had gone slightly wrong and say 'there you go, that should have ended up on a Lotus'.

Ross Prawn -

I'd let chipmunks knaw my arm off if I could do that. I went to Maranello during the summer, and but for a car museum, you can't see anything of interest unless you're a Ferrari owner, and even then I'd say it would be really disappointing - "There's where we make the cars and there's the gift shop. See you."

One of my acquaintances, Gord Donaldson is brother of Gerald (Gerry) Donaldson, Canadian Formula 1 author, biographer and reporter.