On her first day covering Formula 1 for Sky Sports, Rachel Brookes accidentally forced Bernie Ecclestone to miss his wife’s London Marathon. A few races later she kept going live on air for 11 minutes straight, champagne running down her back in the stinking Indian heat, as Sebastian Vettel celebrated a world championship behind her.
In 14 years covering the sport from the paddock and pit lane, Rachel has built a reputation as one of Formula 1’s most trusted broadcasters. She knows how to read every driver on the grid, when to push and when to let them walk, and what it actually takes to do the job at that level. Now she has written it all down. Her debut book F1 Racing Drive is out on 7 May and available on Amazon.
This is one of the best conversations we have had on Away We Go Podcast. Rachel is generous, funny, and completely candid about the realities of a career that looks like a dream from the outside.
We cover how she became the first woman to do live cricket broadcasts for Sky Sports News, the five-year letter-writing campaign that got her the job at Sky, what she learned about herself by actually racing a car, her approach to interviewing drivers in the raw minutes after they climb out of the cockpit, how Liberty Media transformed the sport and what that transformation cost journalists in terms of access, what she discovered about Max Verstappen while researching the book, the Nico Rosberg and Michael Schumacher Monaco toilet story you will not forget, calling Bill Clinton “Bill” on live television, and what the job actually looks like when the cameras are off.
Pre-order F1 Racing Drive on Amazon: https://amzn.to/48WkeUx
Follow Rachel: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rachelbrookes X: https://x.com/RachelBrookesTV TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@rachelbrookestv
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