On Tuesday this week I booked the day off from work and headed down to London to see the Regent’s Street Formula 1 event. Before going, I could find very little information out about the event, other than it was taking place at about 6pm and that 8 teams were turning up.

Before I continue with this article I will point out that the event itself was fantastic and I would attend again next year should they decide to repeat it. However, the exact opposite could be said about those responsible for its organisation.

I arrived at Regents Street at around 3:15pm to see the sides of the street lined with barriers but little other activity. There were people lined up all along the barrier with a few gaps every so often and took up position approximately half way across the route where the crowd was at its thinnest, opposite the Tescos where a small road joined the main street.

At this point there were no barriers across the road, however we were informed by one of the crowd marshals that the barriers would eventually be going up so we decided to hang around.

About 1 hour later some marshals turned up and half blocked the road and we assumed our place. A gap was left in the road which were informed by a different marshal was due to the fact the road was going to be used for emergency access.

15 minutes after settling in to what we assumed would be our permanent positions a third marshal turned up and informed us we had to move back. They claimed the barriers had been set up incorrectly and we were pushed back about 2 metres. Fifteen minutes after that – with people milling around the so called emergency access road they attempted to reverse an articulated lorry laden with hundreds of spare barriers back down the street – through the crowd numbering a few hundred. Amazingly no one was hurt – and the only damage was to the barriers that the lorry caught backing down the street.

Once this lorry had backed down the street the organisers filled in the gap completely with barriers – obviously the emergency access point was needed no more. By this time, our prime positions that we had been waiting in for about an hour and a half had been lost as there was at least one row of people in front of us. However, this it would seem was still too good to be true as the crowd marshals decided to get the late comers one last chance to surge to the front.

For no apparent reason, other than perhaps they had severely underestimated how many people would turn up for the event, the decided to move all of the barriers about 4 metres forward into the street. Being laden with bags and camera brought along for the trip we were unable to move quickly enough and found ourselves about 3 rows from the front. I was unable to see much of the street with my eyes and was only able to capture anything from my camcorder by stretching my arm up as high as it would go.

It reached 6pm and the parade started – I was able to capture most of the fun demonstration vehicles – such as Austin Powers’ Shaguar and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang – and despite my poor position was enjoying the demonstration. Once the warm up vehicles had finished the road was cleaned by 3 Road Sweepers and the road was given one last inspection by the safety car.

Just as the first Formula 1 car fired up its engine the 3 Road Sweepers came up in the other side of the street and parked themselves directly in front of our position. Just as we assumed the joke couldn’t get any worse the driver came out and told us he wanted to move his road sweepers through the now closed emergency access road.

Fortunately for the driver, the crowd were either too shell shocked by the appalling organisation or were collectively the most patient people on the planet as he managed to escape unscathed bar a few rounds of understandable verbal assault. Initially the crowd marshals seemed to side with the crowd by asking the road sweepers to move their vehicles but after a lengthy discussion – meaning we were unable to see the first two Formula 1 cars due to the road sweepers being parked in front of us – the crowd marshals came back to the barrier and started pushing the barriers back.

None of them seemed to understand why the crowd was reluctant to rush to their help as Nigel Mansell and Da Matta made their runs whilst they were barking “Move Back!”

Once the road sweepers made their way through the barrier was reclosed and I found myself an extra row closer to the front, but was still able to see very little. They cleared out of the way just in time to capture Luco Badoers Ferrari.

The rest of the event went fairly smoothly, however it was reportedly ended early due to the unexpected huge turn out. Naturally, with figures of 500,000 people turning up the event was declared a huge success and people started debating the possibility of a London Grand Prix with even more enthusiasm.

However, having spent 2 hours travelling down to the London, and nearly 4 hours waiting in one spot for the event to start I feel a little bit let down by the organisation. There was very little information available over the internet – and if there was it was certainly not released to usual news outlets such as BBC news or ITV-F1 – so I did not know what to expect when I got down there.

Neither, it seemed, did any of the crowd marshals – supposedly responsible for our safety and enjoyment of the event. Surely, when you are expecting several thousand people to turn up for an event, you would make sure you remembered which roads were meant to be left open for emergency access or was it planned to push 3 road sweepers through a crowd of about a thousand people?

The only reason we did not miss more of the event was because a young woman on the opposite side of the street collapsed and needed medical attention. This in itself was a joke as the medics carried her on to the part of the street the Formula 1 cars were about to run on just minutes before they set off. This held up proceedings even further.

After the event was finished I found out there had been a running commentary – however there were no loud speakers near where we were. When playing back my recorded videos I managed to hear it faintly in the background but as we couldn’t hear it we had no idea what was going on – until it had shot past us.

If this was intended to be London’s advert to how it would be able to handle the Olympic games then it was certainly no success. You can’t say that 500,000 people turn up it is a success – that’s down to your advertising department. Its how you handle those 500,000 people that matters. And to be honest, short of David Coulthard ploughing his McLaren into the Burger King at Piccadilly Circus because the track marshals set up the barriers in the wrong place I can’t see how they could have organised this event much worse.