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Valtteri Bottas and Williams Martini Racing F1 became the Climber of the Year in F1 or how it all happaned

This year's ceremony of presenting the trophy of the reader's poll of www.climberf1.com, which means the Climber of the Year in F1 was a dramatic event,  nothing for a man with weak heart. Fortunately I am not one of them  but it was a battle with wind mills that came out as a tie, as I would put it. Let's not get  ahead of ourselves and start at the beginning of the year when the communication with Williams Martini Racing F1 team started.

The team won the trophy already in 2012 and there were no problems with handing over the trophy in 2013. As it happens people come and go also in F1, so I have to explain myself over and over again. However, thanks to the previous contacts with the PR manager of Williams Martini Racing F1 I assumed the things would go the same way as in 2013. I couldn't be more wrong. In 2013 I got attached to Billy who is still with the team, but this year Sophia passed the communication to Max Constadurso who is probably new at the team and conducts professionally and the communication with him was also great.

Max emailed me that the rules this year are strict and an accreditation is neccessary, that I need my photo on the pass but without accreditation it's not possible. I didn't give up and did my best to explain myself. When I watch F1 on RTL and always see a lot of people with passes around their necks so I gathered there must be a way to get one for me too.

I suggested handing the trophy over at a hotel, which seemed a viable alternative to me, but in F1 even simple things are complicated, everything happens at the circuit, in the paddock and nothing else is possible.
 

Max wrote: "It is posssible in paddock, you can have also an interview with Sir Frank Williams but we can't give you an accreditation, everything goes to our sponsors etc. Max and Sophia did their best and  I'd like to thank them.

Sitting in front of my email I was pondering what to do next. I wrote to J.Todt (FIA) and got his assisstant's reply that it really is not possible, even though our website has existed since 2004 as the first of its kind in the world. Unfortunately, F.O.M. is in charge and I have to obtain an accreditation which is, however, almost impossible for me. After two weeks of busy correspondence we got an offer to go through the accreditation proceedings with another party, however in that time we had been already fully engaged with the the arrangements for the Hungarian GP. I contacted one of the sponsors – Martini but they redirected me back to Max. I guess I must have upset someone as almost immediately I got an email from Sophia telling me not to contact their sponsors! I was living under the impression of being a free agent with free will who might turn to anybody he wants. Well, I guess I got it wrong.

What happened in the end? I got another email from Max suggesting two options. Either send everything to the UK or bring it to the hotel in Budapest and leave it at the reception. My wife thought it insane to go to Budapest for a few minutes and leaving the cups for somebody at the reception without a chance of shaking anybody's hand, which is what really matters to me.

I tried to make some phone calls to find somebody who might take the cups to Hungary, but all was in vain. You have no idea to what lengths I was willing to go to get someone!!!

I considered my options - send it by post for CZK 1500,- without any guarantee of delivery, not to mention the fragile content. DHL can tell you exactly when the parcel would be delivered but an airmail insured package would cost about CZK 10000,- with the delivery the next day, or by car for 5000,-. But they're not perfect either, I asked around a bit and a more learned operator told me I'd need a profi packaging service for glass. She gave me a contact to a very pleasant gentleman who told me it would be another 1500,- and to get ready for the fact that it would also make the transport more expensive. In the end, the total budget came to CZK 20,000 by air or CZK 15,000 on the land. Having said that to my wife, she lost her usually tollerant stance and told me there would be no more spending, after all those years and all the money it'd had already cost, end of discussion. Unfortunately for me, she was right.

One Italian coffee later I wrote to Max to send me the address of the hotel where we would bring the cups, hoping that they wouldn't get lost. The trip there and back was still cheaper than sending them. Our inssurance at Unicredit Bank is very reliable, I bought 10-day highway stamps for Slovakia and Hungary at UAMK from a very nice, smiling lady, which was the only thing that made me happy at that time.

We set off for Budapest on Thursday 23 July, 2015 at 5 am. We were lead by TOMTOM navigation with great success again. The D1 highway turned into a one-way road even more than last year, however more workers actually did something, about 20 of them! Nothing changes in the CR, noone is able to expedite our firms, they're just using technology as an excuse...

We went through Slovakia and Hungary, arriving in Budapest at about 11am, by the way, the air temperature was reaching 37 degrees Celsius. The entrance to the hotel was blocked, but as soon as we parked our car there was a porter asking politely about our whereabouts. He grabbed the cups and took them to the reception, we got back to our car and headded back home. It never took more than 5 minutes. I took some photos, still hoping we might actually stumble upon somebody of the team, but we didn't.

Budapest, centrum, Le Meridien Hotel 



 

 

This is my face having left everything at the reception, I was worried, it was 36 degrees Celsius outside.

What we left at the reception were two hand-made cups of the Nizbor glassworks  Rückl Crystal for Valtteri Bottas and Williams Martini Racing F1 team, plus certificates with special frames from Centrum FotoSkoda, painted in the team's colours done by an Unhost's car painter Zbynek Klekner. On top of that, we also brought certificates of our Beetroot Martini cocktail for Sir F.Williams and his daughter Claire accompanied by 2 glasses ornamented with Czech granates again from Nizbor glassworks. We will not make the contents of the Beetroot Martini known to public before we have presented it to  Sir F.Williams and his daughter Claire, which should happen in Belgium.

 

The way back was actually more difficult than the way there. Hungary and Slovakia were ok, we just had a pit stop at a Hungarian petrol station, which was, by the way, much dirtier than anything we saw here. Having crossed the border to the CR the radio announced a 12 km traffic jam near Brno. It hit us at the km 8 and we had to crawl for almost one hour. We could see nothing actually happening at some of the construction sites, a three-shift operation isn't probably in the Czech companies' vocabulary. We got back to Unhost around 9pm.

I also need to say something nice about the Japanese brand HONDA. We drove HONDA CIVIC 1400 ccm, 99 HP bought at AUTO JAROV. The car worked perfectly. Current cars don't have a spare tyre, but I put one in the trunk, just in case we got a flat tyre.

I sent a text message to Max saying everything was in place but got no reply. I send an email the next day and Max replied that he answered to the text immediately, but I got nothing, so much for O2's service! In one of his emails Max promised to make sure the cups would get to the right hands and get some photos for me. The photos really arrived and I'm happy for that. I hope I will be able to meet the team in future, thank Max and Sophia in person and that I will be able to get an accreditation for the Grand Prix.

 

Claire Williams. She looks great, doesn't she! And with our cup and the certificate for the team!!!

I would like to express my thanks to Max and Sophia for their effort, I apologize for my stuborness and possible inconvinience. My thanks to the Williams Martini Racing F1 team who won the trophy Climber of the Year in F1 for the second time this year and became the second team to win the trophy twice.