A former F1 mechanic says he and his colleagues would roam from city to city finding sexy women in bars to pose as Grand Prix grid girls.
Marc Priestley, who now hosts popular car TV show Wheeler Dealers, spent several years in the minor leagues before being hired by McLaren in 2000. He quickly rose through the ranks and was added to the team's chief pit crew in 2002.
Writing in his 2017 book 'The Secret World of the F1 Pitlane', Priestley claims he was regularly tasked with scouring local bars the day before a race to nab the hottest women he could find. "It was commonly the mechanics' mission to head out to the bars of the local town on a Saturday evening to 'snare' a young lady either 'hot enough', but more commonly just willing enough, to take on the task of being grid girl the next day," he wrote.
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"It was quite remarkable how often one of the team managed to convince somebody to stand on a cold, wet grid and hold a sponsor board in front of our cars on Sunday afternoons." Grid girls were banned in 2018 after the FIA deemed the practice 'inappropriate'.
Priestley, or 'Elvis' as he's affectionately known, spent several years working with the likes of David Coulthard and Kimi Raikkonen, and was also part of Lewis Hamilton's team when the Stevenage-born driver won his maiden world title in 2008.
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He admitted to being "in awe" of everything around him in the early days of travelling the world with McLaren, particularly after witnessing a degree of unprofessionalism working in Formula 3.
"There weren't many Sundays when most of the mechanics on the grid before a race weren't still wobbly from the Saturday night before – it was just the way it was back then," Priestly wrote. "Such were the differing levels of professionalism, compared to the very highest echelons of motor-sport."
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In 2009, Priestley opted to work in McLaren's Woking base instead of travelling to each race, before turning to a career in media a year later. He began writing about motorsport for various magazines and websites, and eventually became a regular guest on Sky Sports' The F1 Show.
A few years later he was hired by American outlet CNBC to present their flagship F1 show, One Second in F1 Racing. His experience there eventually landed him a role at Wheeler Dealers in 2021.
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