One way or another, a lot of my life revolves around wheels.
I write about Formula 1 for a living (day job: editor of F1 Racing magazine); I spend as much of my spare time as possible riding a bike. And thanks to both these things (plus the fact that I commute to and from my office, in Teddington, Middlesex), I spend a lot of time on the road.
Not particularly glamorous roads, mind you. Not Route 66, nor the Pacific Ocean Highway. More like the A23, then the M25 in rush hour.
But there are highlights. My trip to the Australian GP in 2008 included a drive along the Great Ocean Road, from Adelaide to Melbourne, with friend and fellow F1 scribe Matt Youson. And only last week I took in a round-trip to Monaco for the Grand Prix (just under 2000 miles averaging 17.5mpg in a 5.0-litre Infiniti FX 50S – a petrol V8 beast that was built for the Autoroute/Autobahn/Autovia and is a quite marvellous machine so long as someone else is picking up the tab [thanks, Infiniti]).
It's moments like these that I'll be sharing on this blog as and when the mood takes me.
Don't expect a definitive account of Formula 1 goings-on here – you can find a closer approximation to that particular aspiration in F1 Racing (@F1Racing_mag). Here, instead, I hope to be able to provide some of the 'off-cuts': the stuff that ends up on the cutting-room floor because, sadly, 132 pages per month sometimes just ain't enough.
There will also be bike talk, oh yes, because I do like bicycles. By way of example, my non-paddock highlight of the Monaco race weekend wasn't the epic bash thrown by Force India on Vijay Mallya's yacht, The Indian Empress. I didn't go to that (I'd rather die, tbh). But what I did do was take a spin up the Col de la Madone, just north of Menton in the Alpes-Maritimes.
Readers with an inclination towards road cycling will recognise the CdM as a classic Tour climb – not an epic, such as the Alpe d' Huez, the Mont Ventoux or the Col du Tourmalet, but still a lung-stretching 970m grind up from the Med, rewarded by a descent through La Turbie to the sea quite breathtaking in its speed and beauty.
Even writing about it is making me ache for a return; the spin made me realise why so many of the current F1 posse are such keen cyclists. If you lived in Monaco (as so many of them do), why wouldn't you get out and ride? The roads, the climbs, the scenery… all sublime.
I hope you find something to interest and entertain here. Through highs and lows, on track, in the paddock and beyond, the F1 life is quite a ride.
I write about Formula 1 for a living (day job: editor of F1 Racing magazine); I spend as much of my spare time as possible riding a bike. And thanks to both these things (plus the fact that I commute to and from my office, in Teddington, Middlesex), I spend a lot of time on the road.
Not particularly glamorous roads, mind you. Not Route 66, nor the Pacific Ocean Highway. More like the A23, then the M25 in rush hour.
But there are highlights. My trip to the Australian GP in 2008 included a drive along the Great Ocean Road, from Adelaide to Melbourne, with friend and fellow F1 scribe Matt Youson. And only last week I took in a round-trip to Monaco for the Grand Prix (just under 2000 miles averaging 17.5mpg in a 5.0-litre Infiniti FX 50S – a petrol V8 beast that was built for the Autoroute/Autobahn/Autovia and is a quite marvellous machine so long as someone else is picking up the tab [thanks, Infiniti]).
It's moments like these that I'll be sharing on this blog as and when the mood takes me.
Don't expect a definitive account of Formula 1 goings-on here – you can find a closer approximation to that particular aspiration in F1 Racing (@F1Racing_mag). Here, instead, I hope to be able to provide some of the 'off-cuts': the stuff that ends up on the cutting-room floor because, sadly, 132 pages per month sometimes just ain't enough.
There will also be bike talk, oh yes, because I do like bicycles. By way of example, my non-paddock highlight of the Monaco race weekend wasn't the epic bash thrown by Force India on Vijay Mallya's yacht, The Indian Empress. I didn't go to that (I'd rather die, tbh). But what I did do was take a spin up the Col de la Madone, just north of Menton in the Alpes-Maritimes.
Readers with an inclination towards road cycling will recognise the CdM as a classic Tour climb – not an epic, such as the Alpe d' Huez, the Mont Ventoux or the Col du Tourmalet, but still a lung-stretching 970m grind up from the Med, rewarded by a descent through La Turbie to the sea quite breathtaking in its speed and beauty.
Even writing about it is making me ache for a return; the spin made me realise why so many of the current F1 posse are such keen cyclists. If you lived in Monaco (as so many of them do), why wouldn't you get out and ride? The roads, the climbs, the scenery… all sublime.
I hope you find something to interest and entertain here. Through highs and lows, on track, in the paddock and beyond, the F1 life is quite a ride.
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