P1 Motorsport Promo

One of my favourite shoots.

We had two days to film a corporate video for the P1 Motorsport Team while they tested their new cars at the Valencia race track in Spain. We had carte blanche to do what we wanted and decided to spend the money on a Varicam with a Pro35 adaptor and prime lenses to create a slick film look.

Varicam camera with a 70-200 mm lens

On the first day at the circuit, strong winds blew a media centre tent, cleverly placed on top of a stand, on to all the trucks and race cars causing a lot of damage. A morning of havoc ensued with some serious clearing up and one hell of an insurance form for some poor sod. Luckily no one was hurt!!

The Renault World Series is a launch pad for aspiring pilots to become Formula 1 heroes.

All the cars are supplied by Renault and are all the same. No team is allowed to tamper with the engine or its design. Each team consists of two pilots and the two at the helm for P1 Motorsport were Giedo Van Der Garde from Holland and British girl Pippa Mann who also happens to be the only female driver in the series.

Due to delays in production, only one car was delivered to the team for testing, so both pilots had to share the one car. They weren't too happy about that and to top it all off they only had one day of testing left before the championship started so performing for the camera was the last thing on their minds.

The next day we woke to a glorious sunrise; the winds had died down and when we arrived at the track both Pippa and Giedo were in surprisingly excellent moods, getting on with the job at hand as well as giving us time to film some set up shots.

Pippa's interview was filmed in her hotel room in Valencia, Giedo wasn't in the mood so we had to go and film him in Amsterdam a week later, while Roly the team manger and close-ups of the car were filmed at the team's headquarters in Norwich.