A day at the races...

As a massive petrol head and a fan of the Honda brand long before taking on the task of managing their lifestyle comms, news of the opportunity to visit the Team Dynamics Honda BTCC racing team had me running round like a kid who had been told he was being given the keys to a sweetshop.

However, I had to remind myself that this was actually for work purposes, so I had to look out for every intricacy and detail in the team in order to carve out the stories that would generate publicity for the team. And what detail there was – truly a comms professional’s dream.

The day started with us being driven around Silverstone’s BTCC circuit by veteran racer and 2010 runner-up, Matt Neal. The vehicle was a totally road-standard Civic Type-R - Honda’s outgoing flagship performance car that puts out 197 of their finest horses. The experience was special to say the least and really highlighted both the mind-blowing skill of the driver and the engineering excellence that Honda puts into its road going vehicles. I could have been chasing the menacing black Civic in a Ferrari with twice the power and not come close to overtaking it.

Fun over, it was time to get under the skin of the 2010 BTCC Manufacturers Championship-winning team to find those little nuggets of information that keep me in my job. And what an operation it is. Forget the mega-budget F1 teams, with hundreds of staff and flash offices – this is where true hard work and teamwork pays the biggest dividend. With just 8 permanent staff, some of whom have been there for over 15 years, the all-British Team Dynamics Honda team is one of the largest, most talented and longest serving in the pitlane. Not too dissimilar to Honda’s Civic factory in Swindon then, albeit on a smaller scale.

The similarities don’t end there. Despite sharing little in terms of actual components, the race car and road car clearly share the same ethos. Both are renowned for their bullet-proof reliability (Honda was recently voted the UK’s most reliable manufacturer in a survey of 1.5m cars in Fleet News). Both cars are also renowned for providing class-leading handling as opposed to headline power figures – and we all know the former is far more important for safe and fun real world driving than crazy horsepower.

Want to know more? Well watch this space to find out how Brazil creates exceptional publicity around an exceptional team...