While most of the team are staying in fairly generic lodgings this week, one member of the Red Bull F1 team is having a rather more traditional Belgian Grand Prix, roughing it with the fans on a campsite.

Of course ‘roughing it’ is a term open to interpretation: we have a restaurant, a bar, a swimming pool and – courtesy of our friends at www.vwescape.co.uk – a Volkswagen California camper van with more bells and whistles than you can shake an exceptionally shaky stick at. Actually, we’ve probably got the better of the deal.*

We’re not the only ones happy with our set-up for Spa. Since the remodelling a couple of years ago, the circuit now boasts a new F1 paddock, complete with a beautiful truck-sized access road. The old paddock used to be a poky nightmare, capable of reducing even the most hardened truckie to a neurotic mess; today it’s simple. Or at least as simple as anything can be when navigating a 44-tonne articulated lorry filled with several million dollars worth of race kit into a precise space surrounded by a bunch of other expensive, fragile and/or irreplaceably priceless things. Suffice to say the truckies claim it’s easier now, and we’re not going to argue.

Of course, once the teams’ trucks are parked, the truckies get to use their other core skills: rigging things, polishing things and moaning about their feet. Despite a job description suggesting an awful lot of sitting down, truckies spend most of their weekend running around doing the million-and-one jobs that keep the teams going.

And they never, ever, have comfortable feet. And Spa is one of those races with a high probability of being a double shoe day – ie the boys bringing a spare pair of trainers to change into when the first pair are simply too wet to continue with. At some races it’s a product of heat and humidty; here it’s usually the other thing.

So far this weekend we haven’t had a real Ardennes howler but as they say around here, if you don’t like the weather, wait five minutes and it’ll give you something else…

It seems to churlish to say but by and large on race weekends in mid-season you look around the paddock and all you see are weary faces. Sure we’re in the world’s most glamorous sport but with 11 races down, the strain of the past six months, is beginning to take its toll, especially as this is the first back-to-back we’ve had in a while and with the prospect of another to come in Singapore and Japan. But take a look around the Spa paddock and frowns are few and far between.

There’s something about coming here that refreshes parts other races simply can’t – and we’re not just talking about the very fine qualities of the multifarious Belgian beers. It’s simply down to coming a race track that’s been built for racing, that has a tangible history. Walk from the car park to the paddock and the first thing you see if the broad, almost vertical, right-handed sweep of the hill running up from Eau Rouge to Radillon.

Swipe into the paddock and climb the stairs to the garages and you can look out on the run from Radillon down the long, long Kemel straight to the tight right-hand turn of Les Combes, all of it surrounded by pine trees, hills, a landscape that immediately puts you in mind of John Frankenheimer’s Grand Prix. Nothing against the modern palaces of glass and steel in Bahrain and the upcoming Abu Fhabi but Spa’s different. It’s a proper track.

And if there was any doubt in your mind you only have listen to the feedback of the ones at the sharp end of the action – the drivers. To a man, all clamber out of the car with a grin as wide as the La Source hairpin.
 
“I love this circuit,” said Seb Vettel this afternoon. “It has excellent corners and it’s a lot of fun”. Sister team-mate Sebastién Buemi was similarly effusive, simply describing Spa as “beautiful”.

He’s not wrong. This morning Spa did what it does best. Warm and sunny on the ride in, the circuit threw down mist and rain through first practice, leaving the drivers to struggle thorough a largely pointless morning session. Pointless that is in light of the rest of the weekend forecast, which indicates broken sunshine and dry running.

But this is Spa, and like the old Gerry Anderson kid’s show ‘Stingray’ used to trumpet on its intro, “anything can happen in the next half hour”.

That’s what makes this race an anomaly. On the eve of the 12th race of the year, the frowns should be deeper than the run-off area at Blanchimont, but instead the unpredictability of this awesome venue, its ability to constantly thrill and surprise is keeping everyone’s spirits up. Just when you start to question why we all slog from flight to flight, hotel to hotel, shuttle bus to shuttle bus, Spa reminds you what Formula One can be about. It’s great.

Spa-Francochamps doesn’t have much in the way of signage pointing the way to the circuit; instead there’s a racing car silhouette logo’d on to the road signs dotted around the region. Cock your head and it looks a little bit like one of those really cool 1970s F2 cars: all squat and powerful. At least it does here. Anywhere else and it would just look like the generic clipart racing car it probably is – but Spa has the strange capacity to bring out the dewy-eyed faux-nostalgia in even the most flinty-eyed.

This morning, the journey into the circuit, down the hill from the centre of Francorchamp was brilliant. The sun was shining, the sky blue and the village was still, apart from the occasional hausfrau returning from the bakery with fresh bread, and a gardener clipping another millimetre off an already perfect hedge. It had the sort of pastoral serenity that inspires wet poets to sit down and write about flowers.

Of course, it’s all about to explode. Come tomorrow the place will degenerate into a noisy, heaving pit of happy, loud fans and happier, wealthier restauranteurs as roughly half the population of Europe descends upon the village, bringing chaos in their wake.

There was a taste of what’s to come in the pitlane this afternoon. The crowd of spectators eager to get a look in the garages didn’t so much stand in the pitlane as commandeer it. You couldn’t move outside the garage – even hardened photographers, skilled in the art of pushing and shoving as thought their lives depended on it, were retreating into the Paddock.

Anywhere else it would give rise to all sorts of grumbling, but in the shadow of Eau Rouge it’s treated as a cheery, life-affirming, distraction. It’s just what happens at Spa. Of course the same is true at Monaco – but without the beer and crepes. With talk of some races suffering a downturn in numbers, the impression from wandering around Francorchamps is that such a thing couldn’t possibly happen here.

Out comes the sun again and out come some fairly major high-profile guests of the team. As well as footballers Gaizka Mendieta and Iker Casillas entrepreneur and Dragon’s Den TV star Theo Paphitis and Tour de France winner Carlos Sastre. And Austrian sailor Hans-Peter Steinacher. Two-times Olympic gold medal winner Hans-Peter knows a thing or two about Valencia. He raced not 250m from the Paddock and stayed here for three weeks in preparation for the Bejing Olympics as the conditions off the Spanish coast are similar to those in China.

He said: “I was really impressed with the Red Bull Racing guys here, how professional they are. For me what is really amazing is the attitude in the team. It really comes from the heart.”

Hans-Peter and sailing partner Roman Hagara  are now developing a massive five-man catamaran for testing, then racing, in January and February in the Middle East.

Post-race the British TV broadcaster, the BBC held their live analysis show in the Energy Station. And Eddie Jordan, DC and Martin Brundle were quizzing our two drivers and Chrisitan Horner as well as McLaren’s chief Martin Whitmarsh. Also in shot were various members of the team seen texting their family back in the UK to tell their mums they were on the telly. The technical term is ‘goal-hanging’.

Some of the team were invited to a party on one of the yachts in the harbour for refreshments before heading out early on Monday.

And before they stepped on board the plane they were asked to give details of their next of kin at the Air Iberia check-in desk. An airline asking for your closest relative before you board their aircraft? That doesn’t fill you with confidence…

Next up Spa where the fight goes on…

While Valencia is a beautiful city, and the view from the Energy Station is stunning and the Fishmarket garage a novelty, the Paddock geography set-up doesn’t quite work. The team’s chiropractor was based in neither garage nor Energy Station, you had to walk through the Toro Rosso garage to get to the toilets and the press complained (nothing particularly novel there…) about having to run around from pillar to post in the scorching heat to get from interviews in the motorhome to the press room.

This evening the Energy Station hosted the annual Paddock press officers dinner. Some were either late or unable to attend as their drivers had to attend a photo session called by Mr Ecclestone on the beach to show support for Fundacion Pequeño deseo, an organisation which benefits terminally ill children.

What did the press offices discuss? No idea. No-one was saying anything… all we got was ‘no comment.’ Read into that what you will.

After a disappointing morning and a relatively better afternoon we’re hoping for more improvements on the track tomorrow…

He used to say it was Evil Knevel, but Horner’s thoughts have changed and he now says that growing up there were three characters he admired: Lee Majors as The Six Million Dollar Man, Nigel Mansell and… Monkey.

Monkey? You know the brilliant character from the 70s TV series:

In an interview with The Red Bulletin magazine our team principal said: “After an episode of Monkey, me and my two brothers would try to re-enact the whole thing around the house. I was always Monkey and would use a pillow as my magic cloud and have a tie wrapped around my head to represent Monkey’s golden headband.”

He then moved on to The Six Million Dollar Man and the Lee Majors toy which went with the TV series:

But by his early teens he was fascinated by speed and as a young British motor racing fan there was no-one else but Nigel Mansell. “Nigel was a bit of a drama queen,” said Christian. “But he had big balls and was always a tremendously exciting driver to watch. I suppose that between them, Monkey and Mansell have a lot to answer for…”

Some of our ‘friends’ in the media have been having a torrid time this week. Journalists hate change almost as much as they hate paying for lunch, so when the Valencian race organisers decided to move the press accreditation centre to a new location, a mile or so away from the track, chaos inevitably followed in their wake.

The address on the form had only the most cursory relationship with reality, and the distinct lack of signage for the accreditation centre was also a problem (except on the building itself, which has a sign so large it can be seen from space) and so the press pack spent most of Thursday morning wandering around the city like MacBook-toting mendicants, begging for help from the many policeman on duty. The police were all surprisingly helpful, just not terribly accurate and so many of the media got an impromptu tour of Valencia’s wonderful civic architecture without even asking.

Showcasing the city was the reason for F1 and the America’s Cup coming here in the first place, however the language used by the hacks after finally locating their passes were not quite the enthusiastic tones of awe and wonder the City Fathers had in mind.

But that’s what you get with street racing. Just a couple of years ago Monte Carlo was F1’s only urban venue, but the funny thing about the Monaco Grand Prix is that it’s been around for so long, you forget it exists for 11 months of the year without the barricades. It’s entirely normal to have the roads closed and the town turned upside down; in fact for race regulars, the sight of Rascasse, Ste. Devote et al. without the barricades is frankly rather unnerving. These new street races, here and in Singapore, are much better illustrations of the massive effort that goes into dropping a racing circuit into a space where it really isn’t supposed to be. Everything still has that makeshift look about it and you can appreciate the ingenuity involved in closing a big chunk of the city to traffic, then funnelling 100,000 spectators into it; all of whom expect to be entertained, refreshed and, um… relieved. So far Valencia is doing a marvellous job.

Somebody should take a moment to explain all of this in the media centre, but having walked directly into the circuit ourselves, following the same route as last year without the least bit of fuss, they probably wouldn’t appreciate it coming from us.

Mark, Christian, Seb and the Trust mouse

You’ve seen the logo on the guys’ helmets, you may even be using one of their keyboards…. but how about getting your hands on a Trust mouse, signed by both Sebastian and Mark?

The three Trust Xtreme mice on offer aren’t signed by Vettel and Webber, but the smart boxes they come in are.

The Trust Xtreme features the Red Bull Racing team livery and even comes with weights you can move around the mouse to improve its set-up and handling, just like… well, you get the idea. And the good people at Trust have given us three to give away as prizes.

So, our question:
What was the race distance Mark completed when he won the German Grand Prix this year?

You need to send the answer, your name, full postal address and a daytime phone number to competition@redbullf1.com before 5pm (CET) on Sunday, August 30 2009. The three winners will be chosen at random from the correct answers.

And if you’re not a winner, or can’t wait to get your hands on one of these winning mice, you can buy them online from Amazon or visit www.trust.com to find out your local stockist.

As someone said – in fact two people said it – as we entered the Energy Station this morning – the view verges on cruel. Our motorhome looks out over the harbour where the boats of the Americas Cup were stationed when the race was held here. It’s a great view to have from your office, but the beach just across the harbour looks too inviting. And so it’s proved as several members of several teams have made use of the beach  – after the working day is done, mind.

Much like in Monaco, in Valencia the Paddock is a split affair. While the motorhomes face the harbour, the pit lane itself is situated within the old fish market, which is a beautiful building, but does make it seem like the engineers and mechanics are based in a shopping centre car park. At night.

The new-for-2009 autograph session took place today with Mark joining his colleagues from Toro Rosso signing for the fans and posing for pictures. But he was just shaved into second place in the popularity stakes by Jaime Alguersuari. Not only is Jaime a local boy, but he’s also the only driver on the grid to have won on this track. Last year’s victor was Felipe Massa and Alguersuari won here in 08 in the 2008 British F3 International championship. So he’s bound to be popular.

It’s nicve to know some are thinking of our younger driver’s cultural education. Frankly the same tired questions about Sebastian’s Monty Python boxsets and Little Britain impressions are getting slightly dull. So it was good to note his former press officer at BMW has been keeping him up to date. Her gift to Seb this morning was a set of Flight of the Conchords DVDs. Expect impressions of David Bowie to emanate from his drivers room within the week.

After three and a half weeks either on holiday or in the Factory it was good to finally be back on a plane and heading out to race again. We left the UK in the first sunshine it had experienced for about three and a half weeks and landed in Madrid before the short hop to Valencia. We made it fine, but some of the baggage didn’t which meant delays in the airport and free Air Iberia washbags for several of our number: the curse of the Madrid Baggage Handlers strikes again.

Valencia is one great city. It still boasts the older Spanish buildings around the outskirts, it has the new architecture and bridges of the modern era, but its outstanding feature is the old town with its narrow streets, bars and restaurants which is where many chose to sample the tapas and red wine on our first night here. And it is good. The evenings start very late on, so restaurants are open until 2am and bars are open until, well, no-one’s ever been kicked out of on so no-one knows. And all this is fine and dandy if you can start your working day Spanish-style and have a two-hour siesta, but for those of us who have to work tomorrow it’s an earlier turn-in than the locals.

We’ve got trophies to fight for this weekend…