Nelson Piquet Jr. visits Enstone

With the British Grand Prix just a couple of days away, Nelson Piquet made the most of a gap in his schedule to visit the Enstone factory yesterday to catch up with the team ahead of our local race at Silverstone.

Nelson's first port of call was the engineers' office to look over some data from recent races and to discuss tactics for the weekend. After lunch in the canteen, Nelson went for a walk around the factory to see the guys on the shop floor who were busy producing the latest set of upgrades for his R29. It was also the chance for Nelson to get some hands-on experience of building an F1 car as he helped make some components that will soon be fitted to his race car!

To begin with Nelson went to the clean room where our carbon fibre components are manufactured. It's a totally sterile environment and so he was kitted out in protective gear from head to toe so that no debris entered the room to contaminate the carbon fibres. Nelson helped apply some of the fibres to a side pod before it was taken away to be cooked in one of our autoclaves.

After helping in the clean room, Nelson had a go at some metalwork with our fabricators who were making exhausts for next month's German Grand Prix. Each set takes two and a half days to produce by hand and requires great skill to ensure the exhaust gases are removed efficiently whilst delivering maximum horsepower.

"Even though Formula 1 is so complex these days, it's good to know that some parts of the car are still made by hand," says Nelsinho. "It was interesting to see the guys working and to see how much time and effort goes into making each component. It was pretty cool to help make something that I will be using on the track in a few weeks time!"

After that, Nelson headed for Enstone's Human Performance Centre for some training with Daryl, our resident fitness guru. The programme involved the usual mix of cardio and weights work for a couple of hours, building the fitness and stamina that is needed to race an F1 car at 200mph.

So it was a pretty busy day for Nelson, but a day he thoroughly enjoyed. Now he's looking forward to this weekend's race at Silverstone and getting a strong result at his favourite track.