Car Valet Franchisees Attend Silverstone Event

Autovaletdirect franchisees, Richard Rowe and Paul Salmon, attended the FIM Super Bike World Championship 2010 at SilverstoneCircuit.

The car valet franchise has national alliances and much experience in attending corporate events such as The World SuperBikes, Goodwood Festival of Speed, British Motor Show, Corporate Track Days and Golf Events.

Richard and Paul got to meet the riders and teams in the pit area, and given the duty to look after the Alfa Romeo sponsored cars, which meant keeping them looking immaculately clean at any time of the day.

FS Blog: Tell us more about your first day at the event…

Paul Salmon: Our first day consisted of a thorough Service valet of 11 Alfa Romeo cars, 10 Guilietta's and one Spider. Four of the vehicles were used as medical cars, the other four were safety cars, two were for escorting VIPs and the Spider was to be used for the winners drive.

Due to our unique equipment, experience and drive to do a great job we finished all 11 cars by 4.30 pm, so it gave us plenty of time to spare for the rest of the day.

FS Blog: And the other days...

Paul: The second day again started at 7.30am. Richard and I were both fortunate in being able to work in the pits, which meant we would work, but we could both watch the bikes practising going round the tracks, which was a fantastic experience for me as it was the first time I had seen anything like this.

As it had rained overnight Richard and I immediately set about leathering off the four Safety cars, polishing and maintaining the showroom finish, this was our focus throughout the day.

The third day was basically the same as the second in terms of our duties in keeping the safety cars clean, we also had to maintain the two black and white cars that were to be used for ferrying the VIPs.

There were practice rounds as well as qualifying practice rounds for the bikes so we were kept busy in cleaning the safety cars down.

One thing that broke up the routine was the pit walk, where members of the public paid to come into the pit area to look at the bikes, talk to the mechanics and ogle the models. This also meant a lot of finger marks on the safety cars, which meant that they had to be periodically maintained.

FS Blog: What was your favourite day?

Paul: The last day, Sunday 1st August was the real thing, after all those practice and qualifying rounds. With three warm up rounds and one race before midday and another pit walk with the public, because of it being the penultimate day there were a lot more people. The atmosphere was fantastic because of the enthusiasm of the public and the roar of bike engines.

There were a lot of times throughout the day when there seemed to be a lot of standing around, excellent opportunity to take in some racing and check out the team garages. However this was usually followed by being suddenly busy once all the cars were all bought back at the same time.

The afternoon finished with three races culminating with the World Superbike Championship, which was a spectacular affair with one of the races having a crash involving two riders.

All in all an enjoyable four fully-paid days plus expenses, which I would jump at the chance of doing again which no doubt being an Autovaletdirect franchisee is only around the corner.

Comments

[Becca]

What a fantastic experience! I'm very jealous I bet you saw some beautiful car models!

[Angel wings]

NICE ARTICLE AND THANKS FOR SHARING