THE hard work behind the scenes which made last weekend's inaugural Chinese F1 Grand Prix a great success was largely carried out by 1,937 volunteers selected from among university students and Shanghai workers.

After interview and training classes, they were deployed in 10 departments and one office affiliated to the F1 Organizing Committee. The jobs involved working in the competition department, news and publicity, logistics, transportation guidance, marketing, promotion, safety protection, the medical treatment centre and the main office.

The volunteers started to prepare for the event on September 20, six days before the F1 race. They had to put up with the tiring work, the long trip between the circuit and the downtown areas and the simple food available but they succeeded in ensuring the historic three days of racing went off without a hitch.

The Shanghai Star interviewed some of the volunteers to reveal how they had contributed to the running of the country's first-ever Grand Prix and helped make it a memorable success.

Zhou Mi: "I thoroughly remoulded myself for the F1 race."

As a senior student from Shanghai University of Finance & Economics, Zhou Mi had the kind of job that made him the envy of Chinese F1 fans - he was in charge of a whole team - McLaren.

"I was the only mediator between the team and the organizers. My job was to contact the logistics manager of Team McLaren, find out what they needed and then make sure they got it," Zhou said.

Being such a linkman endowed Zhou with the privilege of freely passing through the pits and team buildings and exploring the inner organization of the team. "I was told that only people with a VIP-card costing about 30,000 yuan (US$3,614) could do this, being a volunteer seemed to give me the equivalent status of earning so much money."

But being a volunteer wasn't always as easy as it might have looked to outsiders. Zhou had to get all the things the racing team wanted such as communication facilities, chemical substances, floor cleaning machines and help to find and arrange the cleaning and maintenance workers and police escorts whenever they were needed. He said the McLaren team had very strict rules and the highest number of requests for all kinds of things. "Maybe that is why I was chosen to serve them as the only boy out of the 10 volunteers who were in charge of race teams," he said. " I think I was shown great trust by being allotted to such an important job, one requiring professional knowledge and considerable ability."

Zeng Ni: "Shanghai is a window onto China and we volunteers had to do our best not to let our country down."

As a postgraduate student of the School of Journalism at Fudan University, Zeng Ni worked as a volunteer in press Centre. "The atmosphere there was harmonious and reporters from other countries respected us. So I feel happy," she said.

According to Zeng, the press Centre at the Grand Prix consisted of a media centre and a photographic centre and her job was with the former. Zeng and her colleagues were all interviewed by senior media officials from other countries such as Switzerland, France, Germany before they were taken on as volunteers. Their job was to go through the cards that all the journalists needed to have, register their seats, affixing the numbers to the seat along with the journalists' names. "We also had to have the answers to the questions that journalists typically raised and help them to phone and search on the Internet, and supply meals for them as well," Zeng said.

"Once a reporter came and told me that she was a vegetarian, which we did not know before. I went to the office instantly and brought back some fruit and cookies. I noticed that she was moved, which made me happy."

Li Xingren: "One hundred rehearsals are not as dramatic as the single real thing."

A senior student from Shanghai International Studies University, Li's volunteer position was right alongside the F1 cars. So he found himself facing the drivers.

As a judge on the racetrack, he had to be in his position 15 minutes before the start. "With three minutes to go, I had to get the racing cars and pit crews out with only 15 seconds to go," he said. "There are three kinds of situation in which I had to wave the yellow flag: when the pit crews had not left; when there was something wrong with the driver; and when the pit crews returned."

Each spectator, whether at the track or watching the race on television, concentrated the hardest on the lead-up to the start. "As a matter of fact, we were under great pressure. We knew 2 billion spectators around the world were focusing on every important second. We had to concentrate too. To some extent, we were acting on behalf of the image of Shanghai and China," Li said.

He also recalled that during practice training, a driver was told by the competition department to create a problem in order to test the response time of the volunteers and how they went about resolving the problem. "From that, I knew our job was very important in looking after the safety of the drivers and we could not be distracted even in practice."

Li also works as a trainee journalist on the Shanghai Jiefang Daily and he had to write an article about the F1 after his work at the track. "Although I was tired I was still excited because I had the chance to be part of F1 racing and being a volunteer has been a precious experience in my life," he said.

Pu Yangjia: "I was excited at first and after the three days of racing I was exhausted."

Pu worked at checking tickets and guiding people outside the track. "We had to do lots of jobs such as checking tickets, guiding visitors, arranging car parking and even collecting the rubbish, most of the time together with the police," she said.

Unlike most of the other volunteers who were students, Pu had already worked for a tourism company in Anting near the F1 circuit. She started to receive special training for the F1 five months ago. In order to become a qualified volunteer, Pu and the others had to have some basic knowledge of F1 motor racing, become acquainted with the circuit and learn how to deal with various problems that could arise during the races.

"We had to be ready for any emergency. For example, some visitor might have got sunstroke," Pu said. "Because we were in close contact with the spectators, we had to make every effort to meet their needs."

Although she had to work more than twelve hours a day and was sun-burned over the three days, she said she was glad to have received praise from foreign visitors and to have experienced the amazing atmosphere created by the first F1 race held in her hometown.