Wednesday - Just the stills duo this time. Lydia arrived at the weird Airbnb in Bologna after a long day of travel (thanks to a cheap connection flight from the UK), and Jazz rolled in later, driving all the way from Avignon. His van—now loaded with cameras, tennis rackets, and water pistols—is our trusty ride for this triple-header road trip: Imola, Monaco, Barcelona. A holiday? Kind of!
Thursday - Early start. Accreditation run. Honestly, a slow image day. F1’s a waiting game, and neither of us felt like standing around in a crush of photographers hoping for a mediocre shot of a driver arriving to the paddock. Instead, we did a big lap of the track, shot some bits for Puma, and scoped out the best spots for the weekend. Wrapped the day with McFlurries on the drive home - convinced they taste better in Italy.
Friday - Imola’s roads weren’t exactly built for a weekend influx of motorsport fans, so we spent a good chunk of the morning stuck in traffic. Once we finally got in, it was a pretty standard day—splitting our time between F2 and F1, the paddock and track. Nothing groundbreaking, but we were ticking boxes.
Saturday - Qualifying day, and we made a detour into the fan zone to shoot from the hillside packed with Tifosi. The hill was a blur of red, waving flags, and a roaring crowd - the loudest cheers for Lewis and Charles (naturally), and for local schoolboy Kimi Antonelli. It was something special to be right there in the middle of it all.
Sunday - Race day. For the F1 grid, Lydia went rogue and shot mostly on Instax while Jazz went back to the hill to soak up the start from the heart of the crowd. After that we covered the chicane and a couple of other spots, then wrapped it up back in the pits for Parc Fermé.
Monday – On the road - Bologna to Monaco. First stop: Autogrill, a service station somewhere on the Italian autostrada. Lids bought a set of Hot Wheels (priorities), and Jazz grabbed a metre-long tube of Italian biscuits (also priorities). We ate sandwiches under a parasol in the car park, because we are fancy like that, and then carried on with the drive. Windows down, Parc Fermé playlist on, we wound through the Riviera, catching sight of the sea now and then as we made it closer to Beaulieu Sur Mer.
