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Sunday 16 December 2007

Simon Arron's diary recording life on the road as a Formula One correspondent

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Simon Arron began his putative writing career at the age of 13, when he plagiarised a Motoring News report of the 1974 Argentine Grand Prix and hand-wrote his own version on several sheets of foolscap (it remains unpublished).


	On the road: Simon Arron

He started to file motorsport stories on a more formal basis in 1980 and in the intervening years has become a freelance contributor to a broad variety of titles, covering affairs of both road and track. He watched his first international event in 1978, when he travelled to the Le Mans 24 Hours by bus (an adventure that began six miles south of Manchester), and he is nowadays an ever-present member of the Formula One world championship press corps. Seasonal highlights always receive widespread coverage – but they tell only part of the tale. There are no champagne moments in the Chinese Embassy visa office, as you spend a morning negotiating your way out of the UK, nor when you wait almost as long in a stifling queue at Heathrow to get back in. Formula One: a life on the road. The story begins here.

From the opening practice session in Australia, on March 16, to the final flourish of a chequered flag (Brazil, October 21), the 2007 Formula One season spans 219 days. In real terms, though, it lasts rather longer. Outside that period teams spend countless hours flogging around test tracks, chasing fractions of a second in front of deserted grandstands.

Freelance writers, meanwhile, spend countless hours logging on to travel websites, chasing fractional discounts into the small hours. In this industry, self-employed often equates to self-financed and attending a full set of world championship grands prix demands a tad more outlay than a monthly railcard.

As a corollary of the above, I share hotel rooms with two friends and colleagues: a bill split three ways makes a small but useful difference to profit margins. The other dramatis personae in this practical triumvirate are fellow writers Mark Hughes and Tony Dodgins. Collectively we are 137 years old and have three wives and six children (divided equally), although between March and October we tend to see less of our families and more of each other.

They begin their journeys in the North-West, I start mine from the Home Counties. During long-haul trips we usually meet at a convenient portal and complete the journey together. Mark and I like to get to airports early and are happy to sit with a coffee once all queues have been negotiated. Tony has a slightly more nonchalant attitude to timekeeping and is quite happy to make a leap for the plane just as the door closes.

Overall our system works, although the process isn't always as slick as certain other aspects of Formula One. Incidents in recent seasons have included a laptop abandoned in an aeroplane seat pocket (Dodgins), two mobile phones left behind on the same morning (Dodgins, the first in an Indianapolis hotel room, the second in a Newark Airport business lounge) and a flight missed in the wake of a road accident (Dodgins, again – as he tried to retrieve his luggage from the boot, his taxi driver was trading punches with another motorist in the middle of a Chinese motorway).

My own contribution includes a heavy fall while practising for a ProAm Minimoto race at Silverstone during the build-up to last year's British GP (probably shouldn't have volunteered, as I'd never previously ridden a motorbike). To compound my discomfort, I was later ensnared by a hawthorn bush while cycling back to base through unlit fields.

All part of a season's rich, unpredictable tapestry.

Choose a month

March
Jetlag, airport hell and borrowed underwear... a few of the less glamorous aspects of the Australian Grand Prix weekend

April
Simon battles his building society and his washing machine on his way to covering the Malaysian Grand Prix

May
The action ramps up in this segment of the calendar, as Simon deals with the trials and tribulations of pursuing the F1 circus

June
Follow Simon's backstage trials and tribulations in Montreal and Indianapolis before he takes in the final French GP at Magny-Cours

July
Simon Arron celebrates 30 years of attending Formula One grands prix... and is then blanked by a social-climbing mallard

August
While the BAA seems hell-bent on creating ever-bigger airports, Simon Arron feels there are some that would benefit from being bulldozed. Oh, and don't park your motorhome outside the Budapest branch of Tesco

September
The trials and tribulations of Simon Arron continue as he follows the Formula One roadshow to the Japanese Grand Prix

October
Japan, China, Spain, Brazil... Simon Arron's year ends with four events in different countries on successive weekends

The year in figures
Simon Arron tallies his hours and miles on the road... and works out how many mobile phone have accidentally been chucked in skips