A race track during F1 weekend can be a difficult place to get to. The more traditional venues tend to be a touch bucolic. It gives them plenty of space to spread out and build grandstands for a 100,000 spectators, but the flip side is that all of those spectators want to arrive at the same time down a road better suited to a donkey cart (and yes Magny-Cours, I’m looking at you, and don’t think you have anything to snigger about either, Silverstone or Spa). City races are a little bit different; you can get to the circuits easily, but getting in can be a struggle. Or, as it turned out yesterday, getting out.

Many of the teams, ourselves included, are staying within the immediate vicinity of the circuit, which encompasses many of the downtown hotels. Getting to the pitlane is simply a question of stepping out of the door and walking down the road.

For anyone coming into the circuit from outside, the City Hall metro station is the main transport hub. It arrives directly in basement of the big shopping centre, spectators pour out and, via a series of interconnected, air-conditioned malls make their way to the relevant gate. After the racing they leave the same way. Or at least that’s the theory.

For some of our more geographically diverse colleagues, leaving the circuit this morning proved to be a little more challenging. The malls and the mass transit system close in the early hours; plenty of time for spectators to exit, not so useful for anyone working in the paddock, leaving at 3am. Without an open door to walk through a city circuit turns into 5.5km of impenetrable steel-link fence. A couple of our colleagues ended up wandering the circuit for the best part of an hour, desperate to find a way – any way – of getting out. Having been reduced to 17litres of coherent sweat in sandals they were contemplating simply coming back to the paddock and sleeping on a bench. Fortunately a kindly cleaning crew took pity on them offered a lift on the back of a street sweeper to a previously un-noticed service exit.

Of course, the way they tell it today it was more like Steve McQueen at the end of The Great Escape. Though Steve, obviously, didn’t make it over the fence.

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