As the press officer for M-Sport, Rachel looks after the M-Sport Stobart Ford World Rally Team, the Munchi’s Ford World Rally Team and various other M-Sport entries into the WRC. She is required to travel to each of the WRC events and between rallies is based back at M-Sport HQ, preparing for the next rally and trying to generate more PR opportunities for the teams.
 My day

5.30am: Wake up to my phone alarm and jump in the shower. Put on thermals and five layers of clothing underneath my team kit – it’s minus 28 degrees Celsius in Sweden today and I’m going to be outside for some of the day so I need to wrap up warm!

6.10am: Meet my colleague in the hotel foyer and we jump in the car to head to Hagfors airport, where the rally service park is based. It’s still snowing outside so the road conditions should be great for the first day. Rally Sweden is the only round of the FIA World Rally Championship that is based on snow and as most of our Ford drivers are Scandinavian who have grown up driving in these conditions, we usually do pretty well at this event.

7.00am: Our drivers head off for the first day of action. Sweden marks the start of the 2011 season and new cost-effective, more environmentally aware regulations – based around 1600cc turbocharged, four-wheel drive cars – have ushered in a fresh era of WRC. Besides a brand-new car, we also have a new driver in the M-Sport Stobart Ford World Rally Team (Norway’s Mads Østberg) so it’s a nerve-wracking moment when our drivers leave service for the first time.

7.30am: Walk over to the media centre to catch up on emails, it’s only a five-minute walk, but the temperature is still dropping outside so I’m grateful to be inside and warm again! I’ve had a few media requests overnight to speak to my drivers about along with some photo requests so I deal with these and then have a chat with some of the journalists sitting round about me. The first stage goes live at 7.58am so I watch the split times on a system next to my desk and tune into World Rally Radio to listen to the live coverage from the stages. World Rally Radio is my lifeline when the rally begins – I listen in through my laptop to get a live feed from the presenters on the stages. At the end of each test, drivers are interviewed and I note down everything that my drivers say – this often helps to provide material for my press releases. It’s also interesting to hear what my drivers are saying on every aspect – how the road conditions have been, if the car set-up is working, if they’re feeling positive or negative ...

9.00am: By watching the split times, I notice that one of my other drivers is losing quite a bit of time on the opening stages. I phone his engineer who informs me that they think it may be power steering problems. I text the World Rally Radio presenter to update her on my driver’s situation and this is communicated on the show. Whenever anything happens to any of my drivers, I always phone the team for an update and pass the message onto World Rally Radio so all the listeners and fans can be kept in the loop.

9.30am: Walk over to the Citroën service area for a meeting with the other team PR representatives. It’s the first time we’ve all had a proper get together since Rally Finland and there’s some new faces so we do introductions over coffee and croissants. We’ve only got 40 minutes before the stages are live again so we have a quick chat through PR plans for Rally Mexico and Rally Portugal (the next two events on the WRC calendar) and then I make my way back to the media centre.

10.30am: It’s an exciting morning as my new driver Mads Østberg leads the rally by over 20 seconds. My phone and emails go crazy with journalists requesting quotes and asking various questions which I respond to. I also update our team Facebook and Twitter pages with how the team are getting on and start to draft up a press release – as my driver is leading the rally, it’s very important I get a midday release out to notify the press of my team’s success.

12.30pm: It’s time to head over to the media zone and meet my drivers as they come back into service. This is a good chance for me to speak to my drivers’ engineers for any technical information. The drivers arrive into the media zone two minutes apart so it’s very busy and there’s various members of the media wanting to speak to Mads but I’ve got to ensure that his engineer speaks to him first – this is vital because any changes that need to be made to the car over service must be discussed straightaway. After my drivers have spoken with their engineers, I have a chat with them before they speak to the media. If my drivers aren’t giving me enough information, I push them and ask them to give me stage by stage analysis. After I’ve got all my quotes, I rush back to the media centre to write up my midday press release.

1.00pm: I send my M-Sport Stobart press release over to the Ford Abu Dhabi Team press officer who has a quick look over it. Once I get approval that it’s OK, I send it out to the media and then upload the story to our website. I also link the story on the website to our team Facebook and Twitter pages before heading back over to the service area where lunch is being served.

1.30pm: Lunch. Ford have their own hospitality area and a fantastic chef who is responsible for churning out 150-plus meals for the whole team, drivers included. The food is usually fantastic and today’s it’s steak. It’s also a good chance to sit down with some of the team, to find out any team updates for the media and to have a light-hearted chat.

2.00pm: It’s a nail-biting afternoon as my driver continues to lead the rally. I base myself in the Ford service area for the afternoon and sit with the team watching the split times for the day’s final stages. It’s a tense and an exciting time.  M-Sport Stobart have never led a rally at the end of the first full day before so it’s really exciting and I’m delighted my drivers are doing so well.

4.00pm: I’ve got a meeting with one of the other team PROs. He’s new to the WRC so over a coffee in the Ford hospitality unit, I talk him through how everything works on the event and we brainstorm some ideas for joint PR activities between our teams for later in the year. It’s great to organise joint promotional activities as both teams mutually benefit from the event. I talk through a joint M-Sport Stobart and Monster World Rally Team promotion that I organised in Spain last year and we agree to do something similar later in the season.

6.00pm: Our drivers are due back into the media zone so I wrap up and head over to welcome them back. It’s a bit of a media frenzy as Mads is still leading the rally.  I try to prioritise the media requests and try to ensure he speaks to everyone. He only gets 15 minutes though so it’s difficult to manage such a short amount of time – if we’re running out of time, then sometimes I will give a quote out to the media on behalf of my drivers. I have a quick chat with my team d