14th-Dec-19, 12:17 PM
An embarrassing lunch with Damon Hill and Jacques Villeneuve.......................
One day in 1996 I received a phone call at work from a friend asking if I would like to go to a midweek F1 test at Silverstone as guests of the Williams team. I did wonder how he had managed to blag this but didn't pursue the question as I was too busy pleading with my boss for a day off at very short notice!
Arriving at Silverstone the next day I was given the magic 'access all areas' badge and spent a wonderful morning in the pits watching the team at close quarters as they went about their testing. Lunch was served in an adjacent pit garage and we sat down at a large table with the entire crew. Damon was wonderfully chatty and happily signed autographs, Jacques was significantly less accommodating and spent the time conversing with his race engineer.
As the coffee was served we were approached by a lady who started to give us the lowdown on sponsorship deals they could offer to large organisations like ours. The sums mentioned were eye-watering and I didn't have a clue why we were getting this hard sell but my friend seemed to take it in his stride and made appropriate non-committal noises although I knew he had no influence on this sort of thing.
He explained afterwards that his firm supplied British Airways with their disposable items such as toilet rolls, plates, cutlery etc. Williams were pitching for sponsorship from BA at the time and had sent the tickets to them. Somehow they had bypassed the relevant people and found their way into my friend's possession so he had to pretend we were actually from the BA advertising department.
Soon after lunch we 'made our excuses' and left for home. Happy days and I still have Damon's autograph on some Williams publicity material. British Airways never did sponsor the team but it wasn't our fault - honest guv.
One day in 1996 I received a phone call at work from a friend asking if I would like to go to a midweek F1 test at Silverstone as guests of the Williams team. I did wonder how he had managed to blag this but didn't pursue the question as I was too busy pleading with my boss for a day off at very short notice!
Arriving at Silverstone the next day I was given the magic 'access all areas' badge and spent a wonderful morning in the pits watching the team at close quarters as they went about their testing. Lunch was served in an adjacent pit garage and we sat down at a large table with the entire crew. Damon was wonderfully chatty and happily signed autographs, Jacques was significantly less accommodating and spent the time conversing with his race engineer.
As the coffee was served we were approached by a lady who started to give us the lowdown on sponsorship deals they could offer to large organisations like ours. The sums mentioned were eye-watering and I didn't have a clue why we were getting this hard sell but my friend seemed to take it in his stride and made appropriate non-committal noises although I knew he had no influence on this sort of thing.
He explained afterwards that his firm supplied British Airways with their disposable items such as toilet rolls, plates, cutlery etc. Williams were pitching for sponsorship from BA at the time and had sent the tickets to them. Somehow they had bypassed the relevant people and found their way into my friend's possession so he had to pretend we were actually from the BA advertising department.
Soon after lunch we 'made our excuses' and left for home. Happy days and I still have Damon's autograph on some Williams publicity material. British Airways never did sponsor the team but it wasn't our fault - honest guv.
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