I really want to like Sao Paulo, but it's difficult when you're constantly looking over your shoulder. I'm not paranoid, just cautious... and with good reason.
A couple of years ago I drove out of the circuit behind an MPV filled with Toyota colleagues, and we pulled up at some traffic lights. Then a swarm of people who appeared from nowhere surrounded the Toyota car and tried to get in the doors. Then a gun shot went off.
I found out subsequently that the Toyota van had bullet proof glass. The same could not be said of ours and I remember quite clearly, hunched down in the back, calmly saying to our driver "be a good chap and stick it in reverse, would you?"
I was remarkably calm that time. I don't think I would have been the following year, though, when a car full of my colleagues from the Red Bulletin was ambushed and the hoodlums tried to smash their windscreen with the butt of a pistol. I might have been more blunt in my language if I'd actually had a gun pointed at me.
Last night i walked from the Hilton to the Hyatt, which is a stone's throw, just a five minute walk. But I heard afterwards (and suspected as much) that this is prime mugging territory. So I got a cab back.
There's already been an incident this weekend, and in broad daylight to boot. David Warren, who runs things for Allsport Management, was being driven from the airport to the circuit when the car suffered a puncture. The driver got out to fix it, but then a well dressed man arrived and tried to motion David away, saying it wasn't safe around there and that he would take him where he needed to go.
"It seemed plausible," David told me afterwards, "but I just felt very nervous about the whole thing. The well dressed man had no car in sight either. I actually took my passport from my briefcase and stuffed it down my trousers".
At this point a van pulled up and some very nasty looking men jumped out and relieved David of his briefcase.
Ahead of the weekend, Red Bull issued a survival guide to press, advising us to answer "no" to questions like "Should I stop at red traffic lights?" and "Should I stop if a car runs into the back of me?"
A couple of years ago I drove out of the circuit behind an MPV filled with Toyota colleagues, and we pulled up at some traffic lights. Then a swarm of people who appeared from nowhere surrounded the Toyota car and tried to get in the doors. Then a gun shot went off.
I found out subsequently that the Toyota van had bullet proof glass. The same could not be said of ours and I remember quite clearly, hunched down in the back, calmly saying to our driver "be a good chap and stick it in reverse, would you?"
I was remarkably calm that time. I don't think I would have been the following year, though, when a car full of my colleagues from the Red Bulletin was ambushed and the hoodlums tried to smash their windscreen with the butt of a pistol. I might have been more blunt in my language if I'd actually had a gun pointed at me.
Last night i walked from the Hilton to the Hyatt, which is a stone's throw, just a five minute walk. But I heard afterwards (and suspected as much) that this is prime mugging territory. So I got a cab back.
There's already been an incident this weekend, and in broad daylight to boot. David Warren, who runs things for Allsport Management, was being driven from the airport to the circuit when the car suffered a puncture. The driver got out to fix it, but then a well dressed man arrived and tried to motion David away, saying it wasn't safe around there and that he would take him where he needed to go.
"It seemed plausible," David told me afterwards, "but I just felt very nervous about the whole thing. The well dressed man had no car in sight either. I actually took my passport from my briefcase and stuffed it down my trousers".
At this point a van pulled up and some very nasty looking men jumped out and relieved David of his briefcase.
Ahead of the weekend, Red Bull issued a survival guide to press, advising us to answer "no" to questions like "Should I stop at red traffic lights?" and "Should I stop if a car runs into the back of me?"
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