My Race Day: Pierre Guyonnet-Dupérat

Communications Director of the French Grand Prix, Pierre Guyonnet-Dupérat shares his typical Sunday of a Formula 1 GP event. Pierre worked as a Deputy Media Delegate at FIA earlier and he is definitely a considerable person in Formula 1 when it comes to marketing and communications. Let’s see how his typical race day looks like!

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Basically, we have a short meeting every morning of a Grand Prix weekend, where we talk through the most important points of the day before and we clarify the to-dos for the day ahead of us. I have three teams as a Communications director, so I work with the communications team, the media centre team and the digital team for social media activities.

After all these meetings, generally, the race day is a bit more relaxed for us. Another important task of mine is to go to the grid with all of our important guests during the weekend. It’s really important to take care of everyone, just to make sure everything goes right. I also take care of influencers in the paddock as sometimes they have specific requests.

Then, we’re all excited for lights out… When I listen to the national anthem, see all the people on the grandstands and see the jet fly over with the national flag of France – it’s just an indescribable feeling. You feel proud because of what you have achieved and organised for the fans, for FIA and for Formula 1 as a whole. You definitely feel part of the show, which is a great emotion. You can experience it only once a year, so it’s quite unique.

After that, we follow the race very closely and we need to be prepared for all scenarios, for example, you might need to release a crisis communication after the event. Moreover, we also monitor if there are any issues on the grandstands or around the circuit – I have a team exclusively dedicated to this.

After the chequered flag, we organise press conferences with the president of our organisation and Eric Boullier (Managing Director of the French Grand Prix) where we announce for instance the number of spectators during the weekend as well.

At the end of the day, we have a closing meeting, where we share the most important happenings with our directors. If you get the job done perfectly, then probably this is the most satisfying part of the whole weekend as you can also spend some time with your colleagues in more relaxed circumstances – this usually takes place at 9 or 10 pm of the day.

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