This weekend’s Sao Paulo GP is a personal milestone as I reach 30 years of attending every single Formula 1 race without missing one.
My run started at Suzuka on November 4-6 1994, and I referenced that anniversary on Twitter when we went to Japan back in April.
However on a strict timeline Interlagos on November 1-3 2024 is the closest I’m going to get to the actual date, so no apologies for having a second bite of the cherry. And this is a personal blog after all!
I believe that it’s also 559 GPs in a row, or a total of 574 including odd races I did earlier while my focus was on other championships (and not counting the 12 GPs I went to as a paying spectator).
Having started as journalist in 1985 while still a student I covered a variety of series in my early years, from British FF1600 in the days of Damon Hill, Johnny Herbert and Eddie Irvine, to WEC with Silk Cut Jaguar, Rothmans Porsche and Sauber Mercedes.
I spent 1992 and 1993 in Japan with pals like Irvine and Roland Ratzenberger, and I then followed most of the 1994 Indy Car series, with Nigel Mansell, Emerson Fittipaldi and Mario Andretti in what was then a stellar field. That was a good experience, and I spent the full month of May at Indianapolis. However it hard to find much work Stateside.
I’d been to odd F1 races with a media pass since 1985, but covering it fulltime always seemed like a distant dream in those pre-internet days. There was a limited amount of space in print magazines, and a group of established journalists – guys who had been my heroes as I was growing up – had all the work locked up.
However at the end of 1994 I returned to Japan to cover the GP, a very memorable race that saw Hill beat Michael Schumacher in the rain. Among the bits and pieces I did that weekend was the above story, which I like to think was an early example of a type of strategy analysis that was unusual for race reports of the time, but would later became more common.
I then went on to Adelaide and the controversial finale that saw Schumacher and Hill clash, and Mansell win the race. I knew Michael well from his Mercedes WEC days, so seeing him win his first title up close – and partying with him late into Sunday night – was a memorable experience.
Heading into 1995 I was at something of a crossroads. I didn’t have enough work to justify returning to the USA, so I took a gamble. With no real plan and no guaranteed work – other than the chance to write press releases for the new Forti Corse team – I bought a plane ticket to the opening race in Brazil, and then flew on to Argentina. After that I went to Imola, and to Barcelona… And I simply never stopped.
So three decades later I’m still here. And I’m still waiting to be paid by Forti Corse! Although my involvement with the Italian team did lead to the memorable experience of sharing a hotel room in Montreal with former Ferrari star Rene Arnoux, then the driving coach to Pedro Diniz…
As far as I know the only people in the paddock with a longer ongoing streak of consecutive races are my old pal Joe Saward, who admits that he is as crazy as I am and had a head start of a few years while I was covering other series, and Sauber sporting director Beat Zehnder, who has been at all of the Swiss team’s races since 1993.
Of course there are plenty of others who started way earlier than I did, but they’ve not done every race. Tech wizard Giorgio Piola recently celebrated 900 GPs, while RBR’s Jonathan Wheatley logged 600 in Singapore, and Aston’s Andy Stevenson will hit 600 in Vegas. However like other paddock veterans they’ve missed races here and there or spent time on test teams, and so on.
It’s not been easy doing it as a freelance, organising and paying for all my flights and accommodation for the whole 30 years, and travelling solo, with no support network should something go wrong. The F1 world has also changed dramatically from 16-17 GPs per year, with perhaps five outside Europe, to 24 races and 15 flyaways. Travel costs have gone up exponentially.
Getting safely to and from all the races in the COVID era was probably the biggest challenge, and also incredibly frustrating, as print journalists were barred from the paddock. I don’t miss the Russian roulette of endless COVID tests and the chance of getting stuck overseas somewhere…
Meanwhile in the digital era the media world has changed dramatically from the days when Bernie Ecclestone banned us from working for the fledgling internet, because he viewed it as a form of “broadcasting”. It’s become ever harder to make a living, and this year has been particularly painful for many reasons.
There have also been personal sacrifices along the way, not least on the part of my family, and I thank them for their patience!
Of course this remains my dream job, and I know I am very privileged to be here and to still be involved in the sport that I have loved since I was a kid, when I was a fan of James Hunt. And while not everything has changed for the better, F1 is as enjoyable and unpredictable and as endlessly fascinating as it has ever been. There’s still nothing more satisfying than getting a decent scoop.
Finally, time for a bit of self-promotion – I’m a free agent and I’m available for work over the last three races of the season, and heading into 2025.
So for any editors reading this who need a news service, features or analysis for either print or online from someone who’s actually at the circuits and embedded in the paddock, do get in touch! You can message me on here, or via LinkedIn.
Here’s to the next 30 years!
Adam Cooper F1 