Stéphane Clair (director of Paul-Ricard): “The real unknown is the resumption date! »

Hello Stéphane, how is life organized on a circuit in confinement? 

It is a sealed circuit which, in our case, rediscovers the horrors of the past (circuit closed to the public between 1999 and 2009. Editor's note) with closed gates. There is just a security team to ensure that everything goes well and a maintenance team to ensure that things remain in good condition, including IT, cold rooms for our caterers' food, etc. Otherwise, it is absolutely closed since there is no longer any activity on the set. 

However, there is no shortage of “projects”, starting with the calendar to be rebuilt…
We have kept a sales team on standby which responds to customer concerns and which tries to put a schedule back in place with a second half of the year which is unfortunately not long enough. We're going to run out of weekends to accommodate everyone. We therefore work with those who can postpone, those who prefer to cancel or want to try a new format during the week.

It is a real headache because we are not alone. All this must fit into a national and international calendar with a terrible domino effect. What is reported by one necessarily has repercussions on others. The work is quite complex and takes quite a bit of time. 

During this period of #Stay at home, we take the opportunity to recall memories of the Circuit Paul Ricard…

The Castellet plateau was in turmoil in 1987 during the French Grand Prix in Formula 1 pic.twitter.com/z1FbpwAfBo

— Paul Ricard Circuit (@PaulRicardTrack) March 23, 2020

The second half of the year therefore promises to be particularly busy...
We already had a busy schedule until the end of October, and we are now in a jam-packed month of November. The problem is that we cannot push the walls and we will have to find solutions. We have organizers who merge their events to try to get everyone racing. We try to meet the demand. The real unknown is the resumption date. It is based on this that we will know if certain runs will still be able to take place during the first half of the year and if we will be able to see the future with a little more serenity. 

We imagine you in constant contact with the GIP Grand Prix de France. What is the trend? 
Today we cannot make any decisions and we act as if everything was going to take place normally. We simply avoid incurring expenses that we might regret incurring. This means that every time we need to do something impactful, we ask ourselves whether we should take one step forward, two steps forward, three steps forward, or not move forward at all. We are groping our way forward because we need national and international visibility of the management of the pandemic which is unfortunately impossible to obtain at the moment. 

During this period of #Stay at home, we take the opportunity to recall memories of the Circuit Paul Ricard…

Here in 1971, the start of the first Formula 1 Grand Prix at the Circuit Paul Ricard. Jackie Stewart won the race, driving a Tyrrell-Cosworth 003. pic.twitter.com/WxGwJslMV5

— Paul Ricard Circuit (@PaulRicardTrack) March 17, 2020

From a more personal point of view, what is the life of a circuit director in confinement like? 
Already, he’s a director on leave! A large part of the staff is on partial activity, but the director, who is a senior executive, must take his annual leave. This does not prevent a lot of teleworking because there is obviously no shortage of files, with meetings of the “steering committee” set up which brings together all the directors. We “manage” remotely what can be done by remaining in contact with our customers, with the federations, with everything that is part of our environment.

They too are getting news, trying to help us, trying to measure the economic impact that the crisis will have in order to limit as much as possible the difficulties that we and our customers will inevitably encounter. Currently, we can only endure while waiting to know the date that will give the signal for a return to a more or less normal life.