MotorsTV UK Official Blog

Hello everyone,

Sorry for my slightly late update after Silverstone.

Well, what a weekend…. it all came together for me and I finally scored my first podium on Saturday and then went and got another on Sunday!

With the weekend being my home race there was a lot of media attention beforehand. On the Wednesday evening before the weekend BMW asked me to attend a BMW UK Motorsport evening where all of the BMW UK employees attended to see Robert Kubica, Troy Corser, Andy Prilaux….. and then me being interviewed by Murray Walker about our own racing seasons and how we are getting on and more a bit about us as people.  It was just great for me because Murray Walker is one of my TV heroes and I have stared at him on the TV interviewing the F1 greats and now he was giving me an interview! It’s another very special moment. He was really good fun and had a great way about him to keep you relaxed so it all went very smoothly.

Also, on the Friday morning after free practice and just before qualifying myself and three other drivers went and did a BBC Radio 5 Live interview…. now I really should have got the clue in the name of the radio station but I had no idea it was a full on live interview until the last few seconds when we went on the air to the whole country!! It was all done upstairs in the Brawn GP motorhome in the F1 paddock and, well it was another pretty scary thing to begin with but it all just went very smoothly and we could just have a great laugh and a conversation really! I think the BBC were happy with the job we did. The funniest part of all though was we kept on having to stop talking to cut down to the F1 paddock to hear Bernie Ecclestone but I felt quite sorry for the reporter because this is what he said… ‘Hello Bernie, we are live on the BBC what can you tell us?’… Bernie: ‘Tell you about what?’… BBC: ‘The problems going on with Max Mosley at the moment’.  Bernie: ‘Max is having problems? I didn’t know that’. At this point they just gave up and cut back to us all looking very angry. I don’t think my laughing helped!

Now, my racing. Free practice went very well indeed – 2nd place – and then the rest of the weekend followed suit. In qualifying my car was so good but I got blocked on my best lap. Still, 6th and 3rd on the grid was satisfying enough. I really had to fight hard in the first race for that first taste of champagne. Lifting the trophy for the first time was definitely very special for me and when I scored another podium the next day it did not feel half as good!

After the very difficult start to the year it was really satisfying to come and score a weekend like that, especially as it was my home race which made it very special indeed. We have had the pace to be on the podium all year and would have been last weekend if not for my penalty at Zandvoort. But importantly, I have now proven my potential and shown it so that makes me very happy. It is very easy for people to doubt you when you are struggling sometimes but many people always believed in me and this really is important to me to show them that they were right to do that.

I have been all over the place since the weekend, not really knowing what to do with myself! I have just been training in the sun and flying my planes but today I will see my friends for a BBQ so I am looking forward to that … but next weekend I get to go to the Goodwood Festival of Speed which is just awesome because it has been three years since I last went and so I cannot wait. You get so close to the greatest cars from the greatest races.

I hope this has been interesting and I just cannot wait for my next race weekend.

Thanks everybody and I look forward to updating you soon after my next race at the Nurburgring in three weeks.

Rupert

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 24th, 2009 at 12:47 pm and is filed under Formula BMW Europe. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.