Ollie Barstow
To say I am a veteran of Crash Media Group, would be something of an understatement.
Indeed, I have spent almost half of my life with the company in variety of different capacities and roles, combining an exuberant passion for motorsport from a young age - sparked by receiving the 1995 BTCC Season Review VHS as a gift and obsessively watching it on repeat - with my enthusiasm for journalism, the written word and the buzz of breaking news first.
It took a chance meeting with an F3 driver’s press officer at the age of 17 to crack open the door at Crash.net, one that ultimately led to being offered work experience at the Silverstone round of the 2005 World Touring Car Championship.
Proceeding to dovetail my Journalism degree studies at university with helping out on the weekends, I began a full-time role with Crash.net in 2008 upon graduating covering the WorldSBK and BSB Championships.
Since then I have amassed 15 years on the front-line representing CMG - both Crash.net and Visordown.com - as a journalist and editor across two-wheels and four-wheels covering series’ as diverse as F1, MotoGP, WorldSBK, BSB, Isle of Man TT, Le Mans, BTCC and more right in the heart of the paddock.
Unusually for this industry, my experience, expertise and reputation traverses both car and motorcycle racing disciplines at the highest level, which in turn has afforded me the opportunity interview and feature a diverse alumni of the sport’s highest-profile figures including Lewis Hamilton, Marc Marquez, Max Verstappen and Jonathan Rea.
From the nervous early days covering WorldSBK - a series I had never previously followed - in 2008, I’ve gone on to become renowned Superbike journalist, hold the hallowed F1 ‘red badge’ season pass, played a pivotal role in Crash.net and Visordown’s emergence as industry-revered, internationally reputed publications and had the pleasure of expressing my opinionated opinions about my passion to a wider audience.
It is also a pleasure to represent the LGBTQ+ community as an out and proud gay man in a motorsport industry that has always been an open and tolerant platform upon which to progress my career.
Fifteen years is a long time but no two working days have ever been the same…