Credit crunch...is motorsport immune?

I suppose the more specific question is actually...is the credit crunch having an effect on motorsport’s ancillary services? Engineering companies, sign writers, helmet suppliers and dare I say it....hospitality companies?

Well the reality of the situation from Classic Dreams perspective is not at the moment, but we cannot afford to be complacent. We were just settling in to a weekend of LMS last Saturday at Silverstone, turned on the TV at 6am whilst preparing the suite for the oncoming hordes and there was Exel Airways, travel and God knows whatever else they traded as, all gone down the pan in one fell swoop.

You might think, badly run company or directors living the high life or inefficient aircraft? Well none of the above, it would seem that the main reason was the recent escalation in fuel costs and the company’s inability to pass those costs on to its customers in time. I have to say I did feel sorry for the management in this case, it’s easy to point fingers when you are watching from afar, but it must be bloody difficult to wind up a company that size knowing there are families stranded all over the place. Not a job I would fancy...under any circumstances.

Okay so this wasn’t a motorsport hospitality company, but you watch this space, because it won’t be long before one or two start dropping by the wayside as things start to get tighter and not just the public but the banks, start to tighten their purse strings.

I can hear you all asking.....and how exactly does that effect me...or even Classic Dreams...well it doesn’t  affect us at the moment and we are going to do our damndest to make sure it doesn’t. To that end, we have instigated a price increase for our Grand Prix Weekend, but tried to keep it inflation linked and not much more. However my plan is to try and hold our 2009 prices at less than inflation increases where possible for all the other promoted events next year.

This is not a time to be making huge price increases to counter the ‘predicted’ lost customers, so I am working on the ‘Matt’s full ship’ protocol which involves getting as many of you as is comfortable in the suite as is humanly possible for every event!!!

The exciting news is that Silverstone have now agreed to us taking over a third suite on the pitlane for 2009!! Unfortunately Silverstone don’t follow my inflation linked idea, so it has cost a HUGE amount of money, but it will now give us a capacity of either 90 guests in one suite or the extra configuration of 30 guests on an exclusive suite basis and 60 guests in the larger suite as is the case now.

2009 promises to be a very exciting year for us, Monaco Grand Prix for the first time, with our VIP yacht hospitality, the ‘last’ Silverstone British Grand Prix and a couple of other projects we are working on that I will announce over the next few months.

On a totally different subject.....

I had a fantastic few hours yesterday at the home of the ‘Quicksilver’ project. For those of you that don’t know, Nigel and his time are attempting to break the World Water Speed record. It is a massive project and the last record has stood for 30 years, so my description would be ‘slightly difficult to achieve’!! I am sure Nigel would go a stage further than that!! Anyway we plan to give our whole hearted support to get the record back in good old blighty, so I will give you some more details of our input and how our customers can benefit as it happens over the next few weeks.

Their website is www.quicksilver-wsr.com I would normally say go and make a donation, but don’t just yet, as I am working on a Classic Dreams corporate package, so our customers get to help as a whole.

Wow...this blog has only taken 15 minutes to right, not the usual 15 days.....I will be back again after the British Superbikes and Singapore F1 Grand Prix.

Bye for now.

Commentators....just arrived back from a brief but enjoyable fact finding mission to Dubai. As you may know there is an Abu Dhabi Grand Prix in 2009 and I was curious about the possibilities of Classic Dreams offering hospitality and tickets for the event. Dubai is about one and half hours away from the capital and is the ‘second’city of the UAE, in a similar vein to the London – Birmingham set up in the UK.

So geography lesson over...what did I think? Well it’s a good job that it is going to be held outside of the summer months....it was 36degrees as we left the airport at Midnight!! The temperature didn’t go below 45 degrees during the day...we are talking hot!! You end up going from one air conditioned vehicle / building / hotel to another and as fast as possible! The standard of the hotels was truly amazing, 5 stars really does mean 5 stars in this country, the service was impeccable and every details was accounted for.

We met several Tour operators based in the area and checked out the transport infrastructure, flights and had a good look at the hotels and packages. It really does make the UK hotels / airports look a bit 3^rd world...to be completely unpatriotic!!

Obviously the only thing we couldn’t actually see in action were the racing cars, but hey who needs them....Dubai is a fantastic place in its own right. So will we be offering a service for the GP? Well in reality probably not in 2009, it’s just too short notice to put the infrastructure in place, but for 2010 then almost certainly, subject to the goings on with the Bernie – Donington – Silverstone love triangle....watch this space.

Whilst in Dubai, I wanted to catch the Hungarian GP qualifying and race, but for some reason, none of the 73 hotel channels had any coverage whatsoever! So I was forced to tune into Radio 5 Live on the laptop and try and visualise the events unfolding....you get so used to TV these days that listening on the radio can be a frustrating experience, however the commentary was excellent and full marks to production team for a great hours qualifying on the Saturday afternoon. I decided that risking two hours of radio commentary on the Sunday was potentially life threatening (Elaine was with me), so I opted to attempt the old ‘don’t listen to sports news’ and ‘cover your eyes at anything resembling the outline of a racing car on TV’ approach which lasted a good 2 hours after the race and then I switched on SKY news to see Heiki on the top step of the podium....

So I decided to just be patient and watch a replay of the race when I got home, only to find a serious lack of Martin Brundle!! For all you Damon Hill fans out there, please don’t take this the wrong way, I respect everything he did as racing driver, you don’t beat Schumi or become World Champion without a serious amount of talent. I also have ‘some’ respect for the way he runs the BRDC, although that is waning, with every British Grand Prix Donington message I come across. But as a commentator he was rubbish! You do tend to forget how we take the commentators for granted, I don’t always think James Allen is the best, but at least he gets the facts straight and there is a good flow of information, Martin Brundle is excellent, straight to the point and with a fantastic eye for the bits us mere mortals cannot comprehend, technically and tactically. All I’ll say is that if you do read this blog Damon.....stick to your day job!!

I guess the question now is...who will the BBC choose to lead their team next year, so again at the risk of alienating myself here goes....

Front Man – Steve Rider

Front Man assistant ‘expert’ – David Coulthard

Head Commentator – Ben Edwards

Pundit – Martin Brundle

Assistant stand in – Anthony Davidson

Anybody disagrees....remember it’s your BBC.....but it’s not your blog....so tough!!!

Back again soon.

That Friday afternoon feeling...you know what I mean, it’s 3.30pm and you really don’t want to be doing anything, but the reality is that if you don’t do it – nobody else will!!

So that’s the reason I am writing the blog now...because nobody else will, despite me trying to convince the rest of the family that it’s their turn.

Anyway the truth is that, there ‘ain’t a whole lot going on’ at the moment, we are in that abyss that always exists after the GP, you have spent two months preparing and then BANG...3 days and it’s all over. However it’s now only one week to the fantastic Silverstone Classic weekend, if you love classic racing cars there are only two places to visit in the UK, Goodwood for the Revival and Silverstone for its rapidly improving Classic.

Having spent a few years recovering from the loss of the prestigious Coys branding and fighting against the Revival for airspace, the Classic is now once again becoming a force to be reckoned with.

There is a massive amount of action going on from Friday – through to Sunday evening and you can find a timetable on our website within the events and online booking page. We only have 2 Sunday tickets left, so you had better be quick if you want them!! Saturday is fine at the moment, but I am expecting a late rush early next week (actually ‘hoping’ would be a better word!!).

 Okay...a completely different subject now...you may recall that I mentioned several months ago about an online magazine called GPweek, well I am pleased to say that still appears to be going well, however I received an e mail this week, from  Octane magazine announcing their new online mag.

For those of you that don’t know, Octane is a sort of upmarket version of a classic/sports car mag that delves into auctions, watches, memorabilia and so on...very good quality. In fact I know it’s good because my copy always gets nicked from the suite on a race weekend!!

The same publishers have just released  a new online mag called ‘I motor’ , doesn’t sound much but take a look at this link - http://dennis.cerosmedia.com/1B487f128968ece653.cde it is brilliant. They have managed to make a format that has been a very slow starter into something that could radically alter the market and really make it work.

It’s not just the usual turning pages, it contains links, videos, downloads, interactive sections, loads of stuff that makes you want to actually read it, rather than look for a way out, you find yourself looking for more! This is one mag that is really going to take off and for once I am pleased to see that it’s not just change for change sake, it is genuine progress in a very stale market...well done ‘Imotor’ and good luck!

Started the blog at 3.30....it’s now 9.30...6 hours to write 9 paragraphs....now that’s progress!!!

Some exciting Silverstone news to come...

What a weekend......

From a real sense of disbelief on Friday when the FIA announced that Donington is to get the GP from 2010 to the most amazing atmosphere I have witnessed at Silverstone, when Lewis Hamilton won the wet / dry British Grand Prix by a huge margin...taking back the championship lead! Wow!

Things started off well on Friday, the weather looked set for a good day, the guests managed to get from their various car parks and all arrived in time for breakfast...which is always a shame...no sausages left over for me! In fact most of Friday morning went very well; we had a charity raffle in the suite and raised well over one thousand pounds for a cancer charity courtesy of some great selling from the Citipost staff.

Then at about 11am we had a call from a friend of Elaine’s who was asking about the Grand Prix moving to Donington, well of course we thought it was a wind up. That was until I checked the Autosport website and discovered the FIA press statement. Shocked is not really the word, more a case looking at the date to make sure it wasn’t April 1^st! How can a racetrack with one road in and out, have the remotest chance of receiving and despatching up to 30,000 vehicles in one day, it will be a complete disaster...not only that but by its own admission, Donington’s facilities are poor and the whole place needs knocking down and rebuilding. If you have ever visited one of the Donington Paddock toilets, you will know where I am coming from.

I have nothing against Donington holding the GP, other than the fact we have already been on the receiving end of their decision making process, when they pulled the plug on our 2008 hospitality plans at the last second....now I know why!! As a customer of ours said to us this morning –

“Bet you'll be having a few more in the future as the chances of Donington making it as an F1 venue are as slim as my chances of driving in it.”

Saturday was a great day, the usual Silverstone summer rain for 30 minutes in the morning then a nice dry and sunny day, if a tad windy – one of our guests likened the suite to the new Honda wind tunnel at one point and Elaine refused to go anywhere near the main door for fear of upsetting her very expensive ‘GP’ hairdo! Qualifying was not quite as exciting as last year, all the Lewis fans were left wanting. The Webber fans were going bananas for about 12 seconds and the Kovalienen fan was ecstatic, although he had no one to share it with! I have to say I did watch the qualifying on Saturday evening and it was pretty obvious that Mr Hamilton was on the ragged edge or actually stamping all over it to be precise, I reckon that someone had switched on the new ‘drive it like you stole it’ button in the McLaren.

So to Sunday, third 4am start in a row and the staff are looking decidedly knackered, but one day to go. The first guests arrive in their canoes at 6.52 am, luckily the coffee is on and the umbrellas are ready, 5 hours of rain didn’t dampen spirits and come 1pm they all lined up in their respective grid positions ready for 2 hours of champagne and excess food! There was an almighty roar every time Lewis went past and although I didn’t see anything other than lap1 and lap 60, I knew what was going on thanks to the ‘ooh’s aargh’s and Boo’s ( presumably either Alonso or Ecclestone ) from the crowd!

Well everyone made it, the helicopters flew despite the ropey conditions in the morning a Brit won the race and even the sun came out in the afternoon, to finish the day off we had a meeting with several other Silverstone Suite holders and did what us British do best.....had a damn good moan about everything!!!   The perfect end to a perfect weekend.....and as I said ‘What a weekend’.

At least for a change I have an excuse....Monaco 2009 launch, website, brochures, three days of F1 testing and rounding that off with the inaugural Classic Dreams Kart Grand Prix!!!

So where to start.....the exciting news is the launch of our new Monaco 2009 Hospitality Packages, you can view the new website at www.classicdreamsmonaco.com if you read my earlier Monaco blog, you will know all about it, if not...why not!!! Read it now...

It has taken a massive amount of work to get the new posters and brochures ready for the F1 testing and British GP, but we made it in the end with about 2 hours to spare and they look fantastic, a big thanks to Rob Barsby at www.shinx.co.uk I really can’t recommend these guys enough.

I don’t want to use the blog as one big advert, but needless to say, high quality VIP Yacht, fantastic hotels, great company, you know the score and before any of you ask, as one trusty customer did the other did ( you know who you are Richard ) the decimal point is in the right place!!

The F1 testing that precedes the British GP is becoming more and more popular every year and with Lewis and the silver cars needing a good result next weekend it was imperative that they had a good test this week. From a spectator point of view, it was pretty inconclusive; although Lewis was faster we didn’t know what the Ferrari’s were up to, so we’ll just have to wait for next weekend.

The new suite had its first real test on Tuesday with a full house of 60 guests for breakfast and it all seems to have held together well, It may look fairly seamless from the paying side of the counter, but just trust me, when I say that it doesn’t always go to plan, Wednesday, 60 guests and 6 breakfasts arrive.......AARRGGHHH!!! Anyway that’s our job and nobody said it would be easy!

We had a fantastic group of guests over the three days, 190 in total and although I am sure not everybody went away happy, I think that we pleased most of the people most of the time.

So to the Kart Grand Prix, after three 16 hour days at Silverstone, Elaine pointed out that my timing for the event at 8pm on the last night, was perhaps, not the best, however a couple of Pro-Plus later and all was well.

Queued for ages to get out of Silverstone, stuck on the A5, finally arrive at Daytona 20 minutes late, and suddenly the realisation that I had left all the trophies at the suite!! I found that Elaine has a wonderfully colourful vocabulary...can’t see what the problem was, she only had to go back and back again to get it sorted....women!!

Anyway, after 3 glorious days of sunshine at Silverstone, it absolutely threw it down as soon as we arrived at Daytona, we are talking wet, very very wet. There was a sense of fear, in the clubhouse beforehand, not made any better by the fact that all the karts were on slicks!! So at 8.54pm, the first Kart GP got underway and boy was it funny! I have never seen so many karts going in so many different directions....that was just the warm up lap....this was going to be a long 40 minutes!!

There were yellows, blacks, greens in fact every combination of flag you can think of and eventually through it all came Simon Childs to take a very well deserved victory in treacherous conditions.

A huge amount of respect to all the competitors, it really was awful out there.

Next weekend is the big one...the British Grand Prix, I’ll do my best to keep the blog updated during the weekend, but my guess is that I will be far too dead to even think about it, so see you again afterwards....but you never know....

By the way, if you haven’t heard yet, Elaine had her picture taken with a certain Mr L Hamilton in the McLaren pit garage on Thursday....don’t worry you will hear all about it....she is driving me insane....’Lewis touched my shoulder’...’Lewis held this pen’......think I am going to be sick....