NOTES FROM MONACO

Nothing does glam like the Monaco GP

Sometimes things just won't go to plan. My interview slot with Lewis Hamilton over the Monaco GP weekend was one such. A little background will provide some context.

For the next issue of F1 Racing magazine, our July British GP preview issue, we'd been discussing with Mercedes, for some time, a particular Lewis Hamilton story. For a number of reasons, it failed to come together in time for our deadlines, so an alternative plan was hatched.

When you buy the July mag, this is the Lewis story you'll see (God willing, as we haven't yet closed the issue).  It's one of our trademark You Ask The Questions interviews, for which Lewis was on excellent, entertaining, fully engaged form (life is so much easier when drivers play ball). All well and good then? Well yes, but...

Consider that in order to get to Monaco I'd driven south from the UK with F1R publishing director Ian Burrows (@ipburrows) as my co-pilot. [There aren't many people, incidentally, with whom I'd happily share a 14-hour car trip with breaks only for fuel refills, but a caffeine-powered IPB was great company from lights to flag.] With that logistical hurdle cleared, the prospect of a short daily rail trip into Monte Carlo from my hotel in Beaulieu-sur-mer seemed a mere fig. As, indeed, it was... Apart, of course, from the day on which I needed to interview Lewis, Friday.

Things began well enough, with a 2-minute stroll to the station for a 1230 train. With the journey taking only 12 minutes and the walk from station to paddock only another 10 I was relaxed and in good time... Or so I thought.

My train, of course, 'went technical', delaying its arrival. 'Une heure en retard' are not the words you want to read when you're expecting a total journey time of vingt minutes.

So, now decidedly agitated, I hot-footed to the cab rank for a coastal drive to Monaco which, on any other day, would have been dreamily serene, but on this day proved excruciating. 

"Plus vite, Madame…"Gallic shrugs and smiles from behind the steering wheel. This journey would proceed at Côte d'Azur speed, not F1 panic pace.

"Vouz prenez la carte?" This bit she understood. "No, cash only". My 30 Euros of folding were only half what Madame Taxi would require. So began a (slow) search for a cashpoint, all the while with the clock ticking towards my allotted Hamilton 20 minutes and with Monaco traffic miring progress still further.

Enough! Would she, I demanded, take my £20 note as well as the €30? A quick haggle ensued and we established to Madame's satisfaction that a British 20 would be near enough to the French 30 she'd had in mind, for her to allow my release. This, for a journey of less than 10 miles.

But still the agony wouldn't end. Only half a mile from paddock sanctuary, but still a race weekend throng to negotiate. Nothing for it but to tighten the straps on the backpack and run. It's moments like these that remind why I generally wear trainers on F1 weekends and carry a backpack that'll stick. Why? Because sometimes you just gotta move!

This was one of those occasions and to any of the race-tripping Monaco weekenders I barged aside in my pell-mell dash for the Merc motorhome I can only apologise and offer the interview you'll read in next month's issue by way of recompense.

Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton being interviewed just before F1R's time slot

In the final reckoning I was 150 seconds behind schedule, which, under the circumstances, wasn't too heinous and anyway the ever-efficient Merc PR duo of Bradley Lord and Nicola Armstrong had shuffled two media commitments to allow F1R's to go ahead seamlessly, brows having duly been mopped.

And that's how it was. We're taught from day one of our journo education – quite rightly – about the craft and love and care that must always go into the creation of a monthly magazine. And, by golly, they do. But still, sometimes, there's nothing for it but to pull every trick in the book and pray that it all comes together.

Photographer Andrew Ferraro, whose work regularly graces the pages of F1 Racing magazine