Motor racing is a very expensive hobby, but once you start with a taste at a racing school like Jim Russell’s the drug gets hold of you and you’re hooked for life. Following my initial grounding at the lower levels, I progressed and was in the running for an F3 drive. Alas, just as there are always winners there are as many, if not many more, losers. I did the Temporada series with Emerson Fittipaldi; the promise was, if Emerson did well he would end up with a lot of sponsorship from Brazil to do the F2 season. If I did well I would end up the Lotus Components F3 driver. We did well dueling for the championship. When we returned Emerson got his deal, but Lotus said they were very sorry but they hadn’t got the money to run me. So, it was the “rent-a-drive” route I had to take up to the higher echelons of the sport.
Thanks to Mike Hailwood, I got involved in F5000. We met at Monaco in the very early 1970s. He was getting back into Formula One—stepping up from F5000. Mike said, “Get into F5000, the experience will be good for you, it will teach you so much.” So, I ended up having an outing at one of the last races of the season at Hockenheim in Mike’s old car, a Surtees TS8 Chevrolet run by Kaye Griffiths. They were so happy with me that they let me run until the end of the season. Mike was right, I enjoyed it so much I was just like a sponge and “soaked it all up.”
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