By Phil Huff
January 14 2007

On Monday I'll be flying out to Valencia for the launch of the BMW-Sauber F1.07, which I'm guessing is not something you expect to hear from the publisher of a Honda Racing F1 supporters site. I'll be there, officially representing the site and Sportnetwork, and looking after the winner of the recent BMWF1Talk.com competition, where one of you was given the opportunity to come along.

I'll be flying on Monday evening from London to Valencia. In Valencia a nice man from BMW, who I assume will be ruthlessly efficient, will meet us and whisk myself and my companion (a 22 year old student girl, meaning any amount of spending on her should impress - dinner at Kripsy Kreme, then!) to a local for star hotel, where BMW will pick up the bill.

Although probably not the bar bill, as that could get too high, even for BMW!

After a good nights drinking sleep, another nice man from BMW will wake us gently at precisely 7:30am with the unmistakeable honk of his 7 series, and transport us to an exhibition hall in downtown Valencia. Think 'Birmingham NEC', but not in Birmingham. Fortunately. In this hall will be a new F1.07, polished up and ready to present to the media, along with two F1 drivers and what appears to be a school boy from Milton Keynes who likes mineral water.

The massed throng of people will question Nick Heidfeld on how he hopes to win races, before asking Robert Kubica questions about how he hopes to win races, although they'll throw a few curve balls about being compared to Jacques Villeneuve, a man who used to drive quite fast. They'll then mumble a few things to themselves as Sebastian Vettel walks onstage before wandering off to the bar.

At precisely 11:45, another efficient BMW representative will shoehorn us into another car and drive to the Valencia circuit, wishing that he had an Audi RS4 rather than the 3 series he's been given. Once at Valencia, and after the bar has been located, the international mix of journalists and hangers-on will sit down and have a chat with each other, mumbling in quiet disagreement that their conversation gets punctuated every 1m 14s by a noisy V8 engine going by. After a few laps, and once Heidfeld (or whoever's driving) realises there's nobody watching any more, the drivers will come and tell us all about how they hope to get some podium finishes, and how much improved the car is.

Team chief Mario Thiessen will lecture us all on how the synergies between BMW and Sauber are optimising the fluctuating information mass towards gathering critical convergent processes, making the car bloody quick.

That's super, Mario.

Willy Rampf will then get even more technical, aware that the German media are writing down every single thing being spoken, no matter how trivial. The Brits will be discussing either Thiessen's dress sense, Vettel's hair, or making bets on whether Jenson can win again in the next 113 races, while the Poles will have become best friends with the bar staff.

Once we’ve battled through that, we'll then be transported back to the Airport, where we'll have to contend with the bored Spanish border guards. Apparently the airport security people are trained to look at your face to see if you are twitching like a terrorist, having obviously taken the one-hour course on identifying bad people by their body language. I generally put on my most natural "I am not a terrorist" expression, and also think it, just in case I'm a Jedi.

My concern is that my facial expression would surely be exactly the same facial expression a terrorist would use, so I act even more unnaturally, drawing more attention to myself. I'm a man pretending not to be a man pretending not to be a terrorist. It's a dangerous game.

Assuming I make it through without being Tazor’d, the nice people at Stansted who've been using my car as a taxi around Bishop's Stortford for 36 hours will hopefully return my vehicle, parking the newly dented side against the wall so I can't see it, at which point I'll wave them a cheery goodbye and head home.

After 2000 miles, 36 hours and a bottle of The Macallan, I'll be back home, ready to prepare for the launch of the Honda Racing F1 RA107.

This is all fairly normal for me, apart from the fact it's a BMW-Sauber launch, and I actually have to remind my self that people would kill to do the things I do.

I've raced against Ralf Schumacher, lunched at the Hilton with McLaren, stopped to chat with Mika Hakkinen, had tea with Johnny Herbert, and nearly got run over by Jacques Villeneuve, and I've done pretty much all of it at other peoples expense.

Some people, mostly with beards and northern accents, complain bitterly that they have to pay their own train fare to get to London, where upon a manufacturer will feed them at the Ivy, put them up in the Waldorf, and then give them a helicopter tour of the city.

That irritates me. Whilst life isn't always as easy as it may appear, it's a damn site better than walking to a cold factory and packing boxes five days a week. I'm privileged, and I know it.

It's therefore a great honour to be able to invite a genuine member of the public (or 'normos' as I like to call them) to live the same life, if only for a day. Joining me will be Nat Lockwood, a Design Photography student from Leeds.

I'd welcome any of you with open arms, but the fact I'm going with a 22 year old girl does help.

I'll leave you with a small bit of advice. If the opportunity comes up again to join us on a jaunt, I urge you to grab it.

With both hands.