Martin Brundle dashing around the grid will form a rich prologue to the 1,000th grand prix show, as it has done for the past 22 years.
‘It’ll be written on my grave,’ says TV’s leading pundit of his a-word-here, a-word-there grid walk.
And before we move on to weightier matters such as how Brundle believes Lewis Hamilton is likely to be crowned a seven-time world champion by the end of next season, what does he make of his pre-race gallop?
Formula One expert Martin Brundle is looking foward to his 500-and-somethingth Grand Prix — in Shanghai on Sunday
He draws a breath, perhaps betraying the fact that he could never shed it even if he wanted to, which he just might.
‘The problem is that nine out of 10 people say they love it, and it’s my trademark, isn’t it?’ he says. ‘It’s really my alter-ego doing it. I interrupt people.
‘I cut in as a driver is having an important conversation with his engineer. If legends like Niki Lauda and Alain Prost are talking, I butt in. It is so not me. I have never watched one back.’
He is in his 36th year as an F1 professional, first as a driver who started 158 races and then as a broadcaster since 1997
Brundle’s scurrying lasts about nine minutes, is totally unrehearsed and unscripted, a high-stakes adrenaline rush that Sky broadcast to 68 nations. And, yes, it can go wrong.
‘I had a “car crash” in Bahrain last race,’ he says. ‘You could hardly see an F1 car for people it was so busy on that grid. I knew Guy Ritchie, the famous director, was somewhere out there.
‘I actually know him from spending some time with him early in the year. So I asked him a question, or so I thought. I wasn’t looking at him at the time, but peering around for my next victim. I’d got the wrong man — somebody who looked like him. I later found Guy and said I’d just spoken to his twin brother. He said it was his bodyguard.
Brundle’s dash around the grid lasts about nine minutes, is a high-stakes adrenaline rush that Sky broadcast to 68 nations
‘But the grid walk has produced some unbelievable moments. At the title showdown at Suzuka in 1998, I remember Mika Hakkinen was pulling his helmet on and gave me a look as if to say I of all people should know better than to approach him then. But I asked him if he could win the title there and then. “Yes, I can,” he said. And 90 minutes later he was world champion.’
We come to speak to Brundle an hour or two before he flies off to his 500-and-somethingth Grand Prix — in Shanghai on Sunday — in his 36th year as an F1 professional, first as a driver who started 158 races and then as a broadcaster since 1997. ‘I can’t wait to go,’ he says of the trip to China. ‘I’m as passionate about Formula One as I’ve ever been.’
He was born into the milieu with his mother and father, who owned a car dealership, steeped in motor racing. Aged five, Brundle went to his first race in 1964, rising before dawn to get from home in Norfolk to Brands Hatch with his Uncle Keith. He later stood on makeshift wooden boxes at Copse Corner to watch races at Silverstone.
