He may not like the media, but he obviously knows how to treat the fans!Īs a bonus, I also received a large, personalized photo from Caterham driver Charles Pic. I only sent it to him as he has been one of my favourite drivers since his move to McLaren following his rookie season (three years at Ferrari notwithstanding). Based on the way he shuns the spotlight, I thought he would be the last driver to sign extra autograph requests sent to the factory. And I was absolutely shocked to receive an autograph from Kimi Räikkönen. Force India returned my photo of Paul di Resta unsigned, but included signed autograph cards of both di Resta and his teammate, Adrian Sutil. I was thrilled to receive three-time World Champion Niki Lauda’s autograph, which he mailed from Austria. As you can see, Adrian Newey replied almost immediately and included a nice personalized message. The responses so far are a bit overwhelming. The requests only went out on August 19, but we have already done quite a bit better than that. In fact, I would have been happy with one autograph – specifically, that of Peter Sauber, founder of the Sauber F1 Team. To be honest, sending my requests out during the middle of the season, I was not expecting a great response rate. well, let’s chalk this up to poor parenting. Three-year-old TPL mascot Little Jense, on the other hand. The lone exception was Jenson Button, who I am not particularly fond of. To make these authentic, I tried to choose someone from each team that I cheered for, rated as a driver, or otherwise admired. Along with the envelope, I sent a photo of the person (usually a driver, but not always) I was requesting the autograph from and a brief note explaining why I wanted their autograph. I still sent an envelope with my address, but no postage (if anyone can tell me why the Royal Mail will not ship stamps to customers outside of the UK, I would love to hear from you).Įach of the requests was addressed to the person, c/o the team and sent to the address listed on each team’s website.
Therefore, I elected to forgo the traditional staple of through-the-mail collectors: the self-addressed, stamped envelope. As I live in Canada, it is quite difficult to secure British postage, and most of the teams are based in the UK. For the experiment, I decided to choose one person from each of the 11 current F1 teams and send them a request. In a word: well.Īs I wrote in part one, I don’t have much experience collecting F1 autographs. If you follow TPL on Twitter (and why wouldn’t you? – you know how the experiment has been going. As promised in part one of this post, TPL has been conducting an experiment collecting F1 autographs through the mail for the last month-and-a-half.
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