About Me and my F1 Buddies.

One of the perks of working in the hotel business is that everyone needs to sleep. (well, except for Michael Jackson who just plugs in to recharge), but, everyone else needs a place to sleep. And one of the perks of working at a Ritz-Carlton, is that you get to meet lots of famous people that need sleep. And maybe a champagne bath or two.


So this week is when the last Formula 1 tests are scheduled before the start of the season. Its when all the teams fine-tune their shiny new cars and pray to their shiny car gods that this year’s mix of carbon-fiber, engines, and tires are just that little bit better than their competition’s. And it just so happens that these tests are being conducted in the tiny kingdom-state of Bahrain (Sound the royal trumpets please).


So, with us being the fanciest hotel in the land, all the teams and their drivers end up staying here. I am ecstatic. I mean, this is friggin cool. Unfortunately, nobody here shares my enthusiasm cuz, well, nobody knows or cares who these drivers are. But I know. And I care. And this is friggin cool. So far I’ve made a dinner reservation for Jenson Button, welcomed Nick Heindfelds at the airport, and I saw Kimi Raikkonen, David Coulthard, Christian Klein, Jarno Trulli and Ralf Schumacher. Ooh yea.


The thing that struck me about these people is that they’re all so perfectly normal. They’re really young, like, between 20 and 27, and very down to earth. The media builds them up to being some superhuman creatures, and you almost expect to see someone with two heads or a tail poking out of their jeans. But really they’re just normal people who happen to be paid 20 million dollars to drive cars in circles 18 times a year.