Ever wondered what F1 stars do the night before a big race? Ben Barry joins Honda’s F1 team
Last Saturday evening I had the most surreal experience of my career on CAR. Invited to Silverstone for an F1 weekend with Honda, the assembled journos were promised a pub quiz in a field with some ‘very special guests’. It couldn’t be, I thought. Surely they’d have better things to do. Like pre-race strategy. Or visualising a no-holds barred, heroic victory that’d leave Hamilton speechless.
But no, Super Aguri’s (the Honda B team) Anthony Davidson and Takuma Sato together with Honda’s Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello turned out to be our pub quiz captains. Barrichello headed my own team and I had the peculiar honour of sitting next to the Brazilian, mulling over such conundrums as what fruit can be found in crepe suzette (lemon) or who wrote High Fidelity (Nick Hornby).
Now if I were yet to score a point after nine races and had a hugely important race the following day, hosting a pub quiz would be somewhere on my to-do list between learning Dutch and knitting mittens. Yet Rubens had the good grace to sit smiling the entire time, entering into the spirit of things and, impressively for a race driver, taking an interest in the mere mortals around him.
Unfortunately, Rubens did rather better in the pub quiz than he did in his car; Team Barrichello finished fourth out of eight back at the campsite, but the man himself came home just out of the points during the race, finishing a lowly ninth – one place above team mate Button. With just one point for the entire team – three fewer than the B team – 2007 really has been a stinker for Honda.
I’m not suggesting that the pub quiz ruined Barrichello’s focus, but it was interesting to witness first hand the sometimes bizarre demands that racing drivers are supposed to meet these days. Let’s hope the important stuff doesn’t get overlooked along the way.