Brits on Pole

This week saw the Williams F1 team open up its Grove, Oxfordshire, HQ to a party of bloggers and web journalists to publicise a competition it is running with its sponsor Philips.

Technical director Sam Michael and simulation engineer Jeff Calam took questions, and there were tours of the factory and the team museum.

The aim of the day was to show how the short-listed entrants in the Philips Driving Academy competition will be narrowed down through a series of actual and simulated driving tests until one is chosen to drive five laps in a Williams F1 car.

Always assuming there’s at least one entrant who Michael feels can handle the car, of course.

More about the competition in a separate story (you can enter it here) but, in the meantime, here are some pictures from the day.

Photos were strictly banned during the factory tour, but they were fair game in the grounds, the museum, the conference facilities – and, of course, during the group interviews with Michael and Calam.

Among the others to attend the event were Duncan ‘Doctor Vee‘ Stephen, Richard and Lloyd from F1-Fans.co.uk (pictured seated on either side of Sam Michael) and Rob from the F1Fanatics blog (in the blue 555 shirt). Links go to their coverage.

A note on the images: because of persistent problems with our website software you may find you get a 404 error if you are viewing this in a feed reader and click on a link to see a full-size photo. You should be fine if you visit the page itself and click from there, however. Oh – and the lighting levels weren’t brilliant for a lot of them. Thanks!