Brendan's Christmas Blog

Brendan's Christmas Blog

Hello from Estonia,

It’s not snowing just yet but the temperature gauge is saying -3 degrees. I’m over in Europe as my recent selection into the FIA Institute Young Drivers Excellence Academy has two camps over the European winter/Christmas break. Pirelli also took the Pirelli Star Drivers from this year’s WRC Academy to the Bologna Motor Show as part of the entertainment in the outside Mobil 1 arena.

 

The Bologna Motor Show was a massive event and I was really privileged to get the opportunity to drive there. The track was a short blast of tarmac and gravel with a crossover in the centre. Pirelli had organised some journalists to come with us for our warm up and they all had big smiles on their faces. The competition was short for me - setting the slowest time in the second practice put me out of the finals but I really enjoyed the event.

 

The first FIA Institute training camp was last week in Edinburgh, Scotland. It was the first time for all those selected from the shootout in Austria to come together with the expertise of the coaches and start to learn what the selection meant for us and to start learning for our year ahead. The camp was held at the University, giving us access to many specific machines and extra skilled hands to monitor and help us through the tasks.

Throughout the three days we were trained in all physical, mental and nutritional areas plus put through some tests and shown a lot of new information that will all help us to prepare and maintain better knowledge about ourselves, our race cars and our teams.

I’ve given myself some new short term and long term goals and will constantly monitor and add to this list. The camp was very busy and kept us on our toes with early morning runs and even a heat chamber stint monitoring how much fluid we lost over an hour of moderate exercise relating it to our heart rate percentage.

Since the camp I have made my way to Belgium, Holland and now Estonia, visiting friends from the WRC Academy and filling in the time over Christmas before the next training camp in Chamonix (France) on January 6.

Thanks everyone for the support this year and we are working on a bigger and better 2012.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year and remember to keep up to date on my twitter and facebook for day to day happenings.

Brendo