Secret mechanic's diary: the holiday's over

Don't get me wrong, this relatively new idea of shoehorning a summer break into the F1 calendar is no bad thing - I thoroughly enjoyed myself for the full two weeks.

The only downsides are that it pushes the end of one season a bit too close to the beginning of the next for my liking and when the fortnight's over, there's a certain amount of readjustment to be undertaken.

Personally, I didn't get back from Hungary and repack my suitcase to jump on another plane somewhere hot, as many of my colleagues and friends up and down the pitlane did.

I landed back at Heathrow on the Monday after the race, rushed home and unpacked my bag and put anything brandishing the HiFlex F1 Team logo into big box. That box then went into the back of a cupboard, not to see the light of day again for a full 14 days.

For those of you living in the 'real world', that may seem a little insignificant or nugatory; however, I can assure you with the utmost sincerity that it is not.

My blissful two-week holiday was spent at home, no alarm clock set on my phone; no itinerary or timetable; no being crammed into the back of a minibus with 10 other blokes each morning and night; no eating dinner as quickly as possible in order to get back to working on a racing car; and probably the most enjoyable part of the entire experience... deliberating, with complete freedom of choice each morning, over the array of colours, styles and brands on offer in my limited bedroom wardrobe, on what to wear.

There's not much room for individuality in F1 uniforms © XPB

It might sound a bit dramatic, but I live the majority of my life in a world where everyone dresses the same. Everyone gets up at the same time and has breakfast, lunch and dinner together, not when they choose, but when they're told to.

No matter which way I turn, I'm bombarded with an extreme form of intrusive, direct marketing, the likes of which now has me obsessed with the companies emblazoned on our uniforms, cars and garage walls etc. Last week I had an actual nightmare involving our official cheese partner!

So the upshot is that, despite loving my job, two weeks completely away from it and the people involved is a bit like breaking out of prison and no one noticing you're gone for a fortnight.

Of course they do realise in the end and one must return to the shackles and symbolic orange boiler suits of eternal normality... do stop me if I'm over dramatising this, won't you?

The first few days back at work, therefore, are something of a reacclimatisation process, adjusting to life back on the inside, so to speak.

Anyway, while I'm on a roll, the other thing that's made me grumpy this week is the fact that the first fire-up of the 2014 car has been brought forward from January to early December of this year. That might sound OK to you, even prudent given the enormous changes afoot, but in order to start up a new car it needs to be in a state of near-completion and the only folk qualified for that particular task are the mechanics.

Now, I'm no Adrian Newey in terms of computing power... or in terms of anything come to that. But my maths is good enough to work out that if I get home from Brazil on November 26 and the new car needs to be built and fired up a week or so later, the gap where we would normally take our end-of-season holidays seems to have disappeared.

In 1998 it was Jordan pulling off a shock at Spa. Some thought in 2013 it could be HiFlex © LAT

OK, OK, I'll stop there, but you see where I'm going with this.

On a far more positive note, we had a pretty good showing at Spa.

The topsy-turvy conditions of Saturday conspired for us and left us in the unfamiliar position of being in with a realistic chance of a podium come the race. There were even some in the paddock conjecturing that heavy rain on Sunday might throw up a Jordan Grand Prix-style wet Spa victory for our little old HiFlex F1 Team.

It didn't happen in the end and there were two reasons that was a good thing. Like a total schoolboy, I went to Spa - perhaps one of the wettest places on Earth - without the basic protection of my team jacket, so while most saw rain as our ally, it was most definitely my enemy.

An old colleague once passed on his wisdom to me in my early years as a mechanic: "When packing your bag for any GP, the first thing to go in should always be big sunglasses - they look cool and can hide a multitude of last night's sins. When packing for Spa, take a good book and a rain coat."

The other slightly awkward and embarrassing situation to have come out of an unlikely victory would've been the inevitable admission that I'd sold my HiFlex F1 'victory shirt' to a race fan in Canada. Our car's so far off the pace and the team's already moved on to 2014, that I was sure there was no way I'd ever need it again. Close call that one.

I think we were about the only team not to be linked with Kimi Raikkonen over the Spa weekend, although I have to say I'd love it if he came here. Not only is he bloody quick, I bet it's hilarious out on the town with him on a Sunday night. Our current pairing can't even drag themselves out to buy the boys a single beer at the end of a weekend.

Will Raikkonen end up at HiFlex for 2014? © XPB

Mind you, if he's not being paid at Lotus, what chance would he have here? We've had to cut back on the amount of laps we can do on a Friday because we've not got enough fuel for the whole event - can you believe that? I'm citing that one as justification for selling team kit if I get busted, by the way; it's insurance in case my salary's ever late.

Well, it's Monza up next, somewhere that management always gets bizarrely twitchy about because it's so fast. A few years ago, I even heard a senior engineer telling his mechanics to make doubly sure all the suspension nuts and bolts were done up extra tight for this event! They're not all clever.

I like Monza for a few reasons: the food and wine's great; it's the last European race, which means we really get on the road after that to some more interesting parts of the world; and the Italian women just seem to put in that little bit more effort getting ready before leaving the house each morning... just an observation.

By the way, if you didn't already know, the lads persuaded me to join Twitter recently, so you can follow me @F1Spanners as I travel the world with the HiFlex F1 Team and keep you updated with a combination of fact and utter nonsense as we go.

Cheers all, speak soon.

Spanners