Scuderia AlphaTauri’s Team Manager, Graham Watson, has made two very long journeys to get here. The first involved coming over to Europe from his native New Zealand in the late Eighties and the second, more metaphorical journey, was making the big jump from the World Rally Championship to Formula 1.

Rallying was Graham’s first love and he took part in events in New Zealand as a driver and co-driver, before a phone call found him hopping on a plane to the UK to become a mechanic with the Ford World Rally Team.

A series of coincidences meant that after five years on the rally trail, Graham ended up making the switch to circuit racing, when he joined Paul Stewart Racing, which incidentally occupied the premises now used by our friends at Red Bull Racing in Milton Keynes. The step up to Formula 1 came in 1996, when he joined Benetton, before joining BAR Honda in 2001. Watson stayed with the team for eight years, through all its various incarnations, as Honda F1 and then Brawn F1.

“My absolute career highlight came in 2009 with Brawn, when we won the Formula 1 World Championship,” recalls Graham. After the demise of Brawn, Graham worked as Team Manager for the several versions of what was finally Caterham, before making the move to Faenza in September 2014.