July News
July 2010
After the rushed-off-our-feet month of June, July kicks off with a bang for Greenlight, with crews already en route to the fourth round of the FIA GT1 World Championship at Circuit Paul Ricard in the south of France for another weekend of live coverage with the full HD broadcast as usual.
It's a double-header weekend as well, because Monday is Tynwald Day, the Isle of Man's State Opening of Parliament, and once again Greenlight will be providing all-day coverage to a local big screen and streaming live to the bbc web page - bbc.co.uk/tynwaldday
There's a break of just two days before the second double-header of the month. One crew flies off to Salt Lake City for the fourth round of the American Le Mans Series, just as the cars and crews start arriving on the Island for the International Rally Isle of Man, fourth round of the British Rally Championship which Greenlight has covered since 2001. Also arriving is one of the limited-edition Focus RS500's, which will have a starring role in a documentary about the RS series, currently in production alongside GTR, which features the legendary Godzilla cars. As soon as the last Evo 10 has been loaded back on the ferry the decks in our edit suites have to be cleared away for the Sourthern 100, on the short circuit at Billown in the south of the Island.
Greenlight is once again backing the most popular road race event of the year with full coverage, trackside and on-bike, and though the TV programmes will bring you all the action, you'll need the DVD if you want to soak up all the paddock atmosphere.
Some of Greenlight staff may need to watch it for that as well, because at the same time as the road racers are getting their heads down around Billown, a crew of two will be fitting onboard cameras to Ferrari road and race cars at Maranello in Italy. Greenlight's onboard camera is fitted as Original Equipment to Ferrari's 3-seat Formula One car, but there will be a flock of F430 race cars to fit as well, and another crew will be at Malcolm Wilson's M-Sport facility in Cumbria, adding more material to the RS documentary.
As soon as that and the Southern is over it's back to Ireland once again, where for the first time Greenlight adds the Kells Road Races to its portfolio of road racing events.
There's almost a complete week to recharge the batteries (literally as well as figuratively) and then comes the third double-header of the month, with one crew boarding a 747 en route to the classic road circuit at Lime Rock in Connecticut for the next round of the ALMS Championship, and another getting the boat for round five of the British Motocross championship in exotic Swindon.
It's almost all over - but the month ends with more of the proverbial bang than whimper, the sixth round of the FIA GT1 World Championship taking place at Spa alongside the 24-hour race, and that'll be our second 24-hour marathon in just over a month.
That rushed-off-our-feet June? It started at Zandvoort in Holland and the Masters of Formula 3, and took us a week later to our first 24-hour race of the year at Le Mans, following Drayson Racing as the British peer achieved his lifelong ambition to cross the finish line at the end of the race. The month also included another round of the British Motocross Championship (in Norfolk), the first public appearance of the cars racing in the EV Cup, a world-first championship for electric race cars for which Greenlight is the appointed production company, THAT controversial Ferrari media day at Fiorano (we pretty much were the media) and helping Jeremy Hart to to close off the Snaefell mountain road for a day while David Coulthard, Robbie Head and Tiff Needell hammered a pair of Mercedes SLS supercars up and down between Ramsey and the Bungalow in 3D.
More info from these excellent web pages:
http://www.americanlemans.com/
http://www.kellsroadraces.com/
http://www.ferrari.com/English/Scuderia/Formula_1/Pages/Formula1.aspx