Memories came flooding back with Seb's tears

It is the recollection of travelling to Sao Paulo airport on a packed and scruffy minibus one Sunday evening in mid-November 2009.

Considering this job takes me to incredible locations and allows me to witness some pretty spectacular things, why would that moment stand out so much? Perhaps it will make more sense if I tell you that it was the first chance I had to catch my breath and reflect after Jenson Button had just won the world championship at
Interlagos.

The memory is of rich, mixed emotions as I realised we had just shared something amazing. Something that Jenson himself had been striving to do for more than 20 years, something that millions of people in hundreds of countries had witnessed, and we'd been right at the epicentre of it.

That is the greatest privilege of this job, above any of the travelling aspects or the chance to make great television, it is the chance to witness genuine sporting and human achievement at such close quarters.

I'll never forget Jenson arriving in the Brawn GP garage. His eyes were wild as he tried to take in all the information. He had a rather vacant 1,000-yard stare and he was emitting a rather heady stench of champagne and sweat.

I guess part of my own emotion was that we were the broadcaster that got the big interview, the live moment with him. In my mind there is nothing to rival live world-class sporting achievement. This job allows you to experience just a small amount of what the stars of our show are going through.

Jenson's title win was special but this past weekend we witnessed emotion just as raw, just as honest and open, as we crowned the youngest-ever back-to-back F1 world champion - Sebastian Vettel. The modern age of digital, interactive TV allows us to stay on air long after BBC1 has booted us off.

We head to the much-vaunted 'Red Button' where we broadcast as long as we want in a more informal way. It was on the 'F1 Forum' that we saw some amazing scenes last weekend: Jenson thanking the Japanese fans for their support and telling us how much the win meant to him.

However, the stand-out moment was sharing with Sebastian the reality of his achievement as we played him a bit of video tape showing the previous eight back-to-back champions. Names such as Ascari, Fangio, Senna, Schumacher and now . . . Vettel.

We were in a packed pitlane, music was blaring from the Red Bull garage, we were surrounded by at least 100 photographers, it was mayhem but suddenly time stood still. Sebastian just stared at our tiny 7in monitor and was moved to tears. A young man with a God-given talent and a dawning realisation of what he had just achieved.

You and I are unlikely to ever be called a world champion but how fantastic that through the medium of television we can get closer to that emotion than ever before and it's such a privilege to be charged with delivering that to the masses on a weekly basis.

So now I have two cherished memories of F1 title success. And it's not the sporting achievement that is most prominent, not the action on the track that makes the hairs on my arms stand on end. It's the human element, the true emotion surrounding the sport, that is what stands out for me.

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